


To drown in the primordial sea

by logicalcomplexity



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: All the shades of consent from enthusiastic yes to NO, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Existential Crisis, Infidelity, M/M, Perfume Terminology, when you think with your libido instead of your brain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-10-28 12:50:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 33,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/logicalcomplexity/pseuds/logicalcomplexity
Summary: You dip your toes in, wade up to your chest, swim out to where you can’t touch the bottom, and sink.—Eugene wonders about the universe; about his path in it and whether or not the one that his parents set out for him is the one he truly wants. If he thinks through the problem logically, there’s no question about what he should do. However, love is not ruled by reason and Merriell complicates matters.





	1. you dip your toes in

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s an Alpha/Beta/Omega AU set in the 60s that lets me whine about science, women’s rights, and the frivolity of physical attraction. I originally conceived of this as a porny oneshot but then I kept writing and...Anyways, the chapter lengths for this particular fic are between 7,000-10,000 words so this will probably be updated on a biweekly or monthly basis (WHY AM I NOT ABLE TO WRITE ONESHOTS. WHY MUST EVERYTHING BE A CHAPTERED THING). Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge Rachel Carson’s book, 'The Sea Around Us', which somehow has influenced the style (although not the content) of this work. Like usual, characters are inspired by The Pacific and Sledge’s With the Old Breed, and I mean no disrespect to anyone. 
> 
> There’s a plethora of warnings that go with writing an A/B/O fic so here we go: some period typical homophobia, intersex genitalia, dubiously consensual and unprotected sexual activity (oral and penetrative sex). This shit is explicit. *plays Robyn’s Honey on repeat*

Kathleen’s date to the Montgomery lab Christmas party became the subject of all gossip instantly. Eugene tried to ignore it, cranked up the volume on the radio on his bench to drown out the tittering of the undergraduate volunteers at the microscopes, but couldn’t help but catch some words here and there.

“…Think she knew?” The new volunteer, a junior biology major named Roger, asked.

Don, a senior who’d been in the lab since before Eugene came on, kept his eyes glued to his scope, making careful but quick tallies in his notebook. Montgomery had them counting zooplankton. “She had to...dyke anyways.”

Eugene set his dissection tools down, letting them clatter louder than necessary. “I’d appreciate if you’d keep your language civil.”

The undergraduates apologized sheepishly, carrying on with their work silently. Eugene returned to his damselfly dissections, anger pulsing in his chest at Don’s crude comment. Kathleen, a PhD student in the lab, did not deserve to be talked about in such a way. Sure, she was a bit bizarre for a woman. She didn’t wear make-up and liked to wear trousers. But Kathleen carried herself with authority and, in Eugene’s opinion, her ambition and passion for science were so clear that her status as a woman or an omega shouldn’t prevent her from pursuing an academic career. Admittingly, he did feel uncomfortable around her sometimes, especially if they did fieldwork alone. His mother’s voice was always in the back of his mind, snidely commenting on what was proper conduct or not. But Kathleen always acted professionally, knowing her tenuous presence as the only female omega in their lab, and in the biology department at large, meant everyone was watching her, waiting for her to slip up.

Eugene worried that she’d done just that at the Christmas party on Wednesday night. Perhaps she thought it would be more intimate, just Montgomery, the graduate students, and the post-doctoral researchers with their significant others. But even then, Eugene knew it was in unspeakably bad taste to bring an omega on the verge of heat to any social gathering.

The scent had preceded them, making the pulse of all alphas in Montgomery’s spacious house jump. Eugene caught the pheromones even in the distant kitchen, as he helped Mrs. Montgomery pile wine glasses on a tray to take into the living room. Shame flooded him when he couldn’t resist breathing through his mouth, letting the smell fully permeate his olfactory glands, assessing their chemical compatibility. Lemon top notes, bitter like the oils of the rind, the mid-tones silky, citrus floral like a magnolia blossom, drying down to something refreshing and vaguely aquatic. He barely reined in the aggressive rumble in his chest, shocked to find that he preferred the fragrance over anything or anyone he’d smelled before. Whoever owned that scent was extraordinarily compatible with him on a physical level.

It turned out to belong to Kathleen’s date, the revelation alarming for several reasons. The first, that Kathleen, an omega, was apparently dating another omega. As liberal and objective as academics claimed to be, there were some societal norms that had yet to be broken and same-sex couples of any kind were still looked down upon. The second, was that the omega was intersex. They presented as male; torso masculine in appearance, their form over all angular and broad shouldered, their dark, curly hair cropped short.

“Eugene, this is my boyfriend,” Kathleen introduced them, her brown eyes burning with defiance. “Merriell. He’s visiting me from Louisiana.”

Eugene swallowed thickly, embarrassed with how much he salivated in the presence of this man, and offered his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Merriell shook it, his grip strong, hands as large as Eugene’s but twice as calloused. He looked Eugene in the eye, a lazy, cocked grin on his face. His eyes were pale, jade green in the soft lamplight. “Likewise. Kathy says you study parasites?”

“Yes, aquatic ecology of parasitic worms. Are you…Do you?” Eugene couldn’t keep a single thought in his head, not with the cloud of pheromones fogging him up.

But Merriell seemed to understand anyway, answering the question he wanted to ask. “Oh no, I ain’t in college or nothin’. Not smart enough. I’m a fisherman.”

Merriell ducked his head self-consciously, exposing the nape of his neck. Between the submissive gesture, the alluring odor, and the charming, slow as molasses Louisiana drawl, Eugene’s heartbeat pounded so loudly in his ears that he had to excuse himself. He avoided Kathleen and Merriell for the rest of the party. Unfortunately, Eugene’s shame and wanting extended past that night, causing him to dodge Kathleen at work as well. He felt truly awful about it, for everyone else in the lab seemed to be keeping Kathleen at arm’s length too.

The door of the lab opened, the doorknob rattling since it tended to stick, and Kathleen walked in. Eugene, Roger, and Don all looked up from their tasks. Roger and Don rather hastily returned their attention to their microscopes upon seeing her. Eugene frowned, because last week they would have at least said ‘hello’. He made sure to wave at her, but she walked past, head bowed dejectedly. In her wake, he caught a whiff of Merriell, just a hint of lemon rind and marine air mixed into Kathleen’s vetiver-heavy fragrance. He pulled at the collar of his shirt, suddenly feeling rather warm, and wondered if someone had tattled to the department head.

—

Every Saturday morning, Eugene called his fiancée, Anne, from the party line in his apartment complex before going grocery shopping. They’d been engaged since the Fourth of July, having met the year before at a mutual friend’s barbecue. He liked her, considered her elegant and refined despite her age, and his parents approved immensely. Anne had been a runner up in the Miss Mobile pageant and she played the piano at their church. Her father owned a pharmacy in town and her mother volunteered at the county library. Her two older sisters were already married with children, little boys aged five and three and two with another on the way. He liked her, he reminded himself, waiting for the operator to connect him. She smelled like lemon cake, buttery and tart, not overly sweet. Eugene didn’t have much of a sweet tooth, after all.

“Hello, Eugene!” Anne greeted him enthusiastically, sounding a bit breathless. He used to tease that she must run to the phone, but she always insisted that he took her breath away.

“Hi darling, how are things in Mobile?”

“Oh, same old same old—although, there was a bit of a scandal at the church Christmas banquet.”

Eugene’s pulse quickened, thinking of his own Christmas scandal. He’d already decided that he wasn’t going to tell her. “Oh?”

“Why yes! The Madson family fired their cook and they haven’t found a replacement. Rumor has it, Mrs. Madson had to make a dessert for the potluck herself, but she insists she didn’t. Oh, but it tasted so awful! And our Winnie, why she knows the Madson family former cook, Lula Jean, and she told me…” Anne prattled on about the sordid lives of the Madson family and their domestic workers for the better part of five minutes. She couldn’t help but gossip, for any Mobile girl worth their salt took pride in poking their nose where it didn’t belong. His mother and Anne got on like a house on fire. “Anyways, how’ve you been? I’m so terribly disappointed that you can’t get out of Florida for the holidays.”

“I’ve been doing really well,” Eugene replied, grateful to switch the topic of conversation to his research. The longer he toiled in academia, the more he realized that he only ever wanted to talk about science. “It’s my own fault really. I expected this particular species of worms to have finished incubating by now, but none of my treatments have hatched. I have to stay here until they do. Hopefully, I can come home for the New Year.”

“Hopefully?” Anne sulked. He could imagine her easily, pouting and crossing her arms, twisting a strand of carefully curled brown hair around her finger. “What if you can’t? Will you come home for Valentine’s Day?”

“I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t make any promises Anne.”

Anne sighed, a blast of loud static over the phone. “Alright. Well, your mother and I sent you a package. It should arrive on Monday, Christmas Day, and it has all of your favorite things in it. Practical things, nothing fun.”

Eugene smiled. He’d mailed her a package on Wednesday, containing a few small, impractical gifts: a pair of delicate pink quartz earrings and a pearlescent faced watch with a pale pink faux leather wristband. “I look forward to it. I’ll call you when I get it, okay?”

“On Christmas Day? Mama will have a fit if I answer the phone with company over,” Anne complained, but Eugene could tell she was being coy, voice high and dramatic.

“I’m going to call you in the evening, whether you pick up or not.”

“Okay,” Anne giggled. “I gotta go. Laura, Miriam, and I are volunteering for a few hours today at the soup kitchen downtown.”

“Alright, have fun and be safe. I love you.”

“I love you too, Eugene. Bye.”

After hanging up the phone, Eugene shouldered the canvas bag that he used for groceries and walked the two blocks to the store. He relished in the mundane moments like this, found the routine of the human animal equal parts comforting and frustrating. He suspected that people became scientists as a coping mechanism for their existential crises, scientific inquiry providing a safe outlet for societally unacceptable investigations into the meaning of life. For example, he shouldn’t question the uninspiring conversations that he had with his fiancée, shouldn’t question whether or not he felt suited for marriage, shouldn’t question if it was fair to share his life with her when all he really wanted was to lose himself in his research. He shoved those questions down, pondering instead over the variable incubation periods of his damselfly helminth species as he picked through a pile of oranges.

“Eugene?”

He jumped, bumping the display and sending several oranges to the ground, rolling in all directions. He scrambled to pick them up and froze when he caught sight of Kathleen’s boyfriend, Merriell, also on his knees, scooping up the rogue oranges. He must have been so absorbed in his thoughts that he hadn’t smelled him, but now that he saw him, it was all he could focus on. The man wasn’t nearly as fragrant as before, his heat clearly over, but it lingered, light and clean like a summer breeze blowing across the ocean. Eugene remained on the floor, awestruck.

“Sorry I startled you,” Merriell said as he finished putting the oranges back. He offered a hand to Eugene to help him up. As Merriell loomed over him, desire flared up in Eugene’s chest, wanting to be on his knees in front of him for a very different reason. “I’m Merriell, Kathy’s boyfriend.”

Eugene accepted Merriell’s hand. The omega hauled him onto his feet with ease. “I remember you.”

“Yeah, I figured you might,” Merriell remarked, eyes assessing Eugene coolly. Eugene thought he looked a little mad, and he had every right to be. The majority of the biology department were still giving Kathleen the cold shoulder, himself included. Although, his reasons for evading her were primarily centered around the fact that he did not want to explain how badly he wanted to fuck her boyfriend.

The way Merriell looked at him though, disdainful and offended by his very presence, made Eugene rush to defend himself in the worst way possible. He blamed his avoidant behavior on his physiology. “I’m so sorry about all the shit Kathleen’s getting. I feel terribly embarrassed by it all. I just, I had a rut coming on not soon after that party and I don’t know how to explain to Kathleen that I—well, I—”

Merriell’s eyes widened, buying into Eugene’s lie, obviously considering the sort of danger he could have been in that night. “Oh, Kathy thought everyone there’d be mated.”

“I’m not.” Eugene shook his head. As he watched Merriell’s expression change, from indignant to bashful, he supposed that he should say that he would be soon, that he had a fiancée waiting for him in Mobile, but the words would not leave his mouth.

“Suppose I should apologize then,” Merriell mumbled. “I shouldn’t have walked in there like that. Like danglin’ a piece of meat in front of a lion.”

“It’s fine,” Eugene assured him, “I’ve got good self-control. It’s just sort of awkward around Kathleen. I know I wouldn’t like it if someone told me that they wanted to…” He trailed off, blushing.

Merriell chuckled. “Yeah, Kathy gets real jealous. I won’t tell.” His posture changed, no longer shy, shifting into a stance more confidant and perhaps a tad flirtatious. “She chewed me out for eyein’ you up already, don’t wanna rehash an old argument.”

Eugene’s heart thumped wildly. “What?”

“Well you could smell the excitement, couldn’t you? I know I could.” Merriell’s green gaze grew heavy, half-lidded and distinctly seductive. Eugene’s jaw dropped. He hadn’t considered that Merriell found him compatible as well. “Anyway, glad we got this lil’ misunderstandin’ cleared up. I’ll let you get to the rest of your shoppin’.”

Merriell left him amongst the fruits and vegetables and it took several minutes for Eugene to recover from what he had said. When he did, he searched the aisles until he found him in the refrigerated section, picking up a carton of eggs. “Hey, Merriell.” Merriell looked impassively over his shoulder at him. “Would you like—I mean, would you and Kathleen like to go out for a drink sometime? With me? I really do feel awful about it. Let me make it up to you.”

Deep down, Eugene knew he shouldn’t have asked. His intentions weren’t honest, driven by a yearning that made him sweat and his pulse race. He would surely feel guilty later, thinking about his sweet Anne. But then Merriell grinned, slow and crooked, as enthralling as the citrus in his scent. “Sure.”

—

Kathleen chose the bar where they met for drinks that evening, a hole in the wall establishment in a part of town that Eugene had never been to before. He gathered rather quickly that the neighborhood was a sanctuary of sorts for same-sex couples of all persuasions. No one batted an eyelid at how close together Merriell and Kathleen sat in the tiny corner booth they’d snagged. Eugene kept as polite a distance from them as he could, somehow ending up seated across from Kathleen with Merriell squished in between them on the bench. He resolutely ignored the glances that Merriell kept sneaking at him, repeating over and over again in his head what a horrible idea it was to flirt with someone else’s significant other right in front of them.

Eugene ordered a pitcher of beer for the table, which they drank as Kathleen vented about the Christmas party backlash. Evidently, some of the undergraduates had filed complaints against her on moral grounds and the department wanted to take away her teaching assistantship. Montgomery assured her that he would shuffle around some funds in order to give her a research assistantship, so she could continue her studies, but she was still mad about losing the teaching experience. “How do they expect me to graduate and get a faculty position if I don’t have any teaching experience on my CV?”

“Thought you taught for a year,” Merriell tried to placate her, rubbing a hand soothingly over her arm. He stared at Eugene as he did so, broad hand encircling her wrist, thumb sweeping in a circular motion over the back of her hand. The action seemed strangely sexual.

“You don’t get it! A man could get a position just fine with no teaching experience at all. As a woman, I’m expected to be twice as qualified in order to even be considered equal to the least qualified man,” Kathleen snapped, shrugging off Merriell’s hand. She got meaner as she became drunker, but neither Merriell nor Eugene policed her. Her situation at the university placed her under so much stress, they figured she needed to let loose and ordered some shots of whiskey after the pitcher ran dry. Inevitably, she drank too much, whining uncharacteristically into Merriell’s shoulder that she wanted to go home.

Eugene helped Merriell bundle Kathleen into her mud splashed red truck. “Sorry about getting her piss drunk.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Merriell shrugged as he buckled her into the passenger seat. “You wanna ride back to your place?”

Eugene nodded, ignoring the guilt creeping along his spine.

Kathleen’s apartment was closer to the bar than Eugene’s and together they lugged her up the stairs and into the studio. Used to women’s quarters being nice and neat, Eugene was rather shocked at the mess of clothes, dishes, books, and papers thrown haphazardly all over the tiny room. Merriell tucked her in, putting a glass of water on the windowsill above the bed within arm’s reach. He bent to kiss her on the forehead, but she pushed him away, still moody and furious at the patriarchy. Mouth twisted with displeasure, Merriell beckoned Eugene to follow him back out to the truck. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

“Have you been together long?” Eugene asked as he climbed into the passenger seat.

Merriell shook his head as he started the engine. “Yes an’ no. My mama nannied her, so we grew up together. She went off to boardin’ school, then college. Came back to Louisiana last summer an’ we had a good time. Don’ think it’ll last though. She don’ want someone like me, not really. She wants a real girl, she’s just afraid to admit it.”

Eugene snorted softly. “Pretty sure Kathleen isn’t afraid of anything.”

“Maybe not,” Merriell mused, fingers drumming on the steering wheel as he drove. “But that don’ change the fact that I’m a steppin’ stone.”

Silence fell between them as Eugene studied Merriell’s profile in the harsh orange glow of the streetlamps. He had a slight underbite, square jaw jutting out in line with his straight nose. Eugene thought Merriell looked strong, capable. The sort of man a woman could rely on. He envied his well-muscled shoulders and calloused hands. “Someone will want to keep you someday,” Eugene assured him softly. Merriell raised an eyebrow at him, green irises glittering in the dim light.

When they reached Eugene’s apartment, Merriell asked if he could come up for a glass of water. Eugene knew this had been brewing all night. Whatever animal magnetism that drew them together felt thick in the air, electric like the static before a storm. He licked his lips, tasting lemons and sea spray, a whisper of magnolia petals evoking a sensory memory from childhood; a handful of them in his hand, silken and easily crushed under his fingertips. “Won’t Kathleen be missing you?”

“Won’t be long, just need a quick drink.” Eugene let him in, brought him up into his neat, one-bedroom apartment and tried not to feel nervous. Merriell whistled at how clean everything was. “An’ here I was raised to think alphas were hopeless at housekeepin’.”

Eugene poured him a glass of water, handing it to him with a tsk. “Cleanliness is akin to godliness.”

“An’ the higher the hair, the closer to God,” Merriell deadpanned with a smirk, taking a long draught, mesmerizing Eugene with the smooth undulations of his throat muscles. He put the glass down on the counter, half-full. “You from around here?”

“No. Mobile, Alabama.”

“Ah, that’s a stone’s throw away from where I grew up.”

“And where’s that?”

“New Orleans.” Merriell lounged against his kitchen counter like he belonged there, hypnotizing Eugene again with his heavy-lidded gaze. Slouching, Merriell had to tip his chin up to look at him, surreptitiously bearing his throat. The sight of his pulse, flickering under the thin skin of his neck, set Eugene ablaze with lust. He longed to sink his teeth into it, drink the pheromones straight from the source. “Alright, Gene?”

Eugene snapped out of his haze, shook his head to clear it. “Sorry, I’m feeling…weird.”

“I know,” Merriell murmured, stepping closer to him, pupils blown wide. “I feel it too. How’s it that you smell like all my favorite things?”

Favorite things—Eugene hadn’t contemplated why he found Merriell’s scent so attractive, but now that he’d said it he knew. Merriell smelt like home. When he breathed in, he saw the magnolia trees in his mother’s garden, snuck a spritz of the lemon oil the maid used to freshen up a room, sat in the boughs of the oak tree behind his parents’ house to marvel at Mobile Bay on the horizon, the wind that caressed his face carrying the aroma of saltwater. Eugene stopped Merriell with a hand on his jaw as he leaned in to kiss him. “We can’t, I’m engaged.”

Merriell tilted his head curiously, rubbing his jaw against Eugene’s fingers like a cat, exposing even more of his neck. “You said you weren’t mated.”

“I’m not but I will be, I should be.” Eugene should be better than this, but he found himself moving closer to Merriell anyways. “This is cheating, we’re both cheating.”

Merriell blinked, slow and calm. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

When their lips met, any residual resolve Eugene had to stop whatever was happening between them melted away. Merriell kissed commandingly, taking Eugene’s face in his broad hands to tilt it so their noses slotted together nicely, nipping at his lips. He licked into his mouth, frantically chasing whatever flavor Eugene possessed that he found appealing. Eugene pressed against him, his own hands running over Merriell’s body, wrists sliding over the glands at his neck, the center of his chest, the crease of his thighs. Some wisp of consciousness in the back of his mind scolded him for dousing Merriell in his scent, because there was no way Kathleen wouldn’t smell him all over her boyfriend now. Merriell’s hands moved from his jaw to his crotch, skimming down Eugene’s throat, chest, and stomach, and nimbly unfastened the front of his trousers. His hand cupped Eugene’s erection through his underwear, palm rolling warm and firm over him. Eugene bucked his hips up into Merriell’s grip, panting against his temple, dizzy with desire.

“Boy, you’re bigger than I imagined,” Merriell purred, letting go of Eugene so he could wriggle out of his own pants. The scent of his arousal heightened, more oceanic than before, so strong Eugene could practically feel his feet sinking in the swirling sand of the surf.

“You thought of me?” He tangled a hand in Merriell’s curls, tipping his head back so he could mouth along the tendons of his neck. A primal pleasure reverberated through his own chest, his animal hindbrain delighted at the idea that Merriell might have masturbated to thoughts of him during his heat.

Merriell chuckled and Eugene, sucking a bruise on the side of his Adam’s apple, felt the vibration of his vocal chords on his tongue. “Yeah, didn’ you?”

Of course, he had. He couldn’t look Kathleen in the eye anymore because each time he did, he thought of how he’d jerked off for four straight nights to a fantasy of knotting her boyfriend. His other hand, digging harshly into Merriell’s back, dragged down over swell of his ass and along the inseam of one thigh. His fingertips came away slippery with slick. He licked the viscous fluid off the pads of his fingers, watching Merriell’s breath catch, irises shrinking to just a sliver of green as his pupils dilated impossibly wider. The pressure mounting in his chest and low in his belly had Eugene stepping back, tugging Merrill with him. “Come to bed.” 

Merriell shed the rest of his clothes as he followed Eugene to his bedroom; jacket, sweater, and shirt dropped carelessly in the hallway. His naked body was exceptionally trim, muscles sculpted from hard labor. The type of lean body that lost weight and gained muscle quickly. Eugene felt woefully flabby by comparison, but Merriell seemed to like that, crouching over him on the bed and biting gently at the soft flesh of Eugene’s abdomen as he stripped him of his trousers. He wrapped a hand around his cock, stroking languidly as he tried to help Eugene with the buttons on his crisp, white shirt.

“What’s the point, wearin’ something with so many buttons under a sweater?” Merriell growled as he tugged at them ineffectually, voice deep and nearly alpha-like with frustration.

Eugene huffed a laugh, struggling to push the plastic buttons through the holes. His hands were trembling so hard and all he wanted was to flip Merriell over and bury his face between his thighs. “Habit. I wasn’t raised wearing t-shirts.”

“No, I could tell you were one of those well-bred Baptiste boys the second I laid eyes on you. Surprised the fuck outta me, how badly I wanted to be on my knees for you. Made me sick.” Merriell’s voice was laced with contempt. It grated on Eugene, face burning with embarrassment when he considered that Merriell’s life had been much harsher than his. The differences between them were more apparent now that they were exposed. Merriell’s deeply tanned complexion stark against Eugene freckled ivory skin, sleek muscles and prominent bones sharpening him into corners that dug into Eugene’s soft body.

The last of the buttons slipped free and Eugene shrugged out of his shirt, tossing it in the direction of his closet. “If I make you so sick, why’re we doing this?”

“You smell so good, I gotta.” Merriell straddled Eugene’s thigh and ground against it, first drenching the skin with slick then leaning forward, head dropping onto Eugene’s shoulder as he rutted his cock over the slippery patch he’d made. “I want you so bad almost feels like heat again.”

This whole interaction boiled down to chemical attraction, a visceral and debilitating kind that one read about in books but never imagined experiencing in the real world. Sordid fairy tales, really, about coming across a mate so compatible they triggered the most basic, primordial sexual response. Eugene used to scoff at the descriptions of such love or lust at first sight, reasonably skeptical of any claims that the fundamental cycling of hormones in the human body could be disrupted so easily. For alphas, sure, a rut could be prompted by an omega in heat, but omega physiology was well studied and determined to be fairly robust to stresses or disturbances. Not that Eugene had any firsthand experience with that; his knowledge of the omega sex came primarily from salacious gossip or medical journals. He was, after all, a well-bred Southern boy. The label stung like an insult and he squirmed down the bed, nudging at Merriell’s thighs to widen his stance, determined to show him just how good he could be.

“What are you doin’?” Merriell’s bemused voice strengthened his resolve.

Settled level with Merriell’s glistening genitals, Eugene sucked his cock into his mouth in lieu of response. Here was the source of that lemon flavor, sour, bitter, and tangy. Eugene liked it, thought that his short, thick cock filled his mouth nicely, nudging at his soft palate but not enough to make him gag. Unbelievably hot against Eugene’s tongue as he curved it around the firm flesh. Merriell moaned and quivered above him, hands gripping Eugene’s hair so hard his scalp tingled. Eugene slipped his fingers into Merriell’s tight, wet heat as he blew him, relishing in his sighs. His hips twitched helplessly, torn between thrusting forward into Eugene’s mouth and riding his fingers. Eugene pulled off his cock to lick him over, happy to find that his pussy tasted briny and faintly sweet, like seawater with a healthy dollop of honey. Merriell writhed with pleasure, nearly suffocating him, but Eugene didn’t mind, just gripped Merriell by his hipbones as he continued to lap at him. Eugene swirled his tongue over the base of his fingers, knuckle deep in Merriell’s hole, and Merriell gasped as he orgasmed. Eugene could feel him, clenching uncontrollably around his fingers, thighs squeezing around his head.

He became incredibly lax in the aftermath, pliant as Eugene rolled him over onto his back and thrust his own cock over his engorged pussy. “Where’d you learn that?” He mumbled, satiated, into Eugene’s shoulder.

Truthfully, Eugene was running on instincts. A purr rumbling in his chest as he nibbled at the swollen glands underneath the junction of Merriell’s jaw, feeling him relax underneath him, displaying his neck submissively. He wanted him so stupid with lust that there’d be no pain when he bit him, claimed him. He drooled, thinking how the taste of iron flooding his mouth would complement the slick. “I’m gonna bite,” he warned, head of his cock just teasing over Merriell’s entrance, catching at the rim and sliding over, again and again.

“Go on, then,” Merriell encouraged, hand heavy at the nape of Eugene’s neck. “Just don’ break the skin.”

Eugene barely restrained himself, gripping the gland in his teeth as he pushed into Merriell’s tight, wet heat. It felt so ripe, firm and full to bursting, and he just knew the flood of pheromones that followed would be rich and uplifting, like eating lemon wedges soaked in honey while sailing on the Gulf. But he refrained, because Merriell said not to break the skin and he wasn’t so far gone that he’d claim a person without their explicit consent. He did knot though, the reaction so unanticipated and unfamiliar outside of a normal rut that he didn’t recognize the swelling sensation until it was too late. “Oh shit.”

He tried to pull out quickly, but Merriell bore down on him, trapping him inside, squeezing painfully. Merriell whimpered, frowning and sounding equally pained, but he wrapped his legs tightly around Eugene’s waist to keep him still as the base of his cock enlarged, tying them together. They both panted with discomfort, for Eugene felt like he’d trapped his dick in a vice and he was sure the knot was stretching Merriell to his limits.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think this would happen,” he pressed his forehead against Merriell’s.

“It’s not bad,” Merriell insisted, the trembling in his limbs betraying him. “I like a lil’ pain.” He grinned roguishly, expression at odds with the tears streaking his temples.

With a great deal of wincing, they managed to rearrange themselves on their sides. Not a particularly comfortable position, since Eugene had to lay on Merriell’s bony thigh, but better than having Eugene’s crushing weight over Merriell for however long it took for the knot to go down. “You on birth control?” he asked tentatively, wiping an errant tear from Merriell’s cheek with his thumb.

“Now you ask,” Merriell sighed, brushing aside his hand to nuzzle into his neck. His nose bumped against Eugene’s glands and he breathed in deeply. “I am, but if I’d a known we were gonna get tied I woulda had you put on a condom. I wouldn’t worry about it though. I’m near sterile if I’m not in heat.” His tongue licked kittenish over Eugene’s throat, hands running over him, pressing his scent into his skin in the same spots that Eugene had marked on him while they were kissing. Their smells were starting to mingle now, Merriell’s bright fragrance darkened by mineral notes and woodsy smoke. Eugene rested his chin on the top of Merriell’s head, breathing deeply. If anything, he smelled even better than before.

But the guilt was back now that the deluge of oxytocin and serotonin in his brain had died down enough for him to think. “Kathleen is definitely going to notice that you’ve been gone so long.”

“Oh hush, I guarantee she’s passed out already.”

“Maybe, but she’ll smell me on you in the morning.”

Merriell shrugged. “She’s been lookin’ for a reason to break up with me anyways. I’ll tell her I went back to the bar. Tell her I found someone who reminded me of you.”

“Why?” Eugene couldn’t fathom why Kathleen wouldn’t want to settle down with Merriell. He didn’t know the man very well, but he could tell he was dependable, maybe a little rough around the edges but sturdy, responsible, kind.

“Don’ want her to be mad at both of us. Take a shower and you’ll be fine.” Merriell stopped rubbing his wrists over him, like he suddenly realized that he was covering Eugene with his scent. Eugene caught one of Merriell’s hands and brought his mouth to the pulse at the thin skin of his wrist. He closed his eyes, losing himself to Merriell’s natural cologne.

“I mean why would she be wanting to break up with you?”

Merriell sighed. “Cuz we don’ love each other, Gene. We’re just keepin’ warm.”

“Keeping warm,” he repeated, ice nucleating in his chest, a coldness sweeping through his body. He shivered, prompting Merriell to snuggle closer. He thought of Anne, who he liked but didn’t love, tried to imagine holding her like this, burying himself deep inside her. He couldn’t. “Are we keeping warm?”

“We’re two strangers fuckin’. What do you think?”

Eugene folded his arms around Merriell, hand cradling the back of his head, tucking Merriell’s face into the crook of his jaw and neck where the pheromones were the strongest. It was a dirty trick, Eugene knew, but he wanted Merriell to want him, to become as obsessed with Eugene’s smell as he was with Merriell’s. This is the one that gets away, he thought helplessly, God I wish you’d make him stay. “I think I could love you,” he confessed, staring vacantly at the blank wall across from him.

Merriell kissed Eugene’s jaw gently, murmuring, “That’s the hormones talkin’. You know nothin’ about me.”

“Well then tell me.” He leaned into Merriell’s affection desperately. “What was life like for you growing up?”

“I don’ wanna talk about that.”

“Do you like your job?”

“It’s alright, a job’s a job.”

“Do you ever wonder why you’re even alive?”

Merriell snickered, puffs of humid air washing over Eugene’s collarbone. “What a weird fuckin’ question. You’re just as bad as Kathy with your lofty thoughts.”

“You don’t wonder about the universe? About the futility of human existence and whether or not self-will is just an illusion? That you’ve already met everyone you’ll ever meet, already done everything you’ll ever do, already made those pivotal choices in your life? That maybe you just aren’t aware of it because time is relative to your position in space and so you can only see what you’ve done and what you’re doing, not what you’re about to do?” Eugene’s heart beat fast again, worked up by his existential crisis. If there was a timeline out there where Merriell was his, he wished this was it.

“Shit, when you put it like that, I absolutely don’t. Calm down, boo.” Merriell pushed his hair back from his forehead. “I can feel your heart beatin’ in your cock and it kinda hurts.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve never knotted anyone before,” Eugene admitted self-consciously.

“I can tell. The media makes it out like omegas are the sappy ones, but a tied alpha acts so sweet they’ll rot your teeth. Anyway, just relax, the knot’ll come down faster.”

A pang of jealousy stabbed through him and Eugene gritted his teeth, a possessive growl rising up in his chest. He tamped down the urge to ask how many others, thinking that Merriell probably wouldn’t answer. “You prefer omegas then?”

“I don’ prefer anyone,” Merriell responded loftily. “I follow my nose, same as you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a make a guess about your fiancée. She’s back in Mobile, right? An’ you must like her well enough, but not enough to put her before your research. Kathy told me, she offered to watch over your experiment, so you could go home for the holidays and you turned her down. Not just for Christmas, but Thanksgivin’ too. Now I know you think Kathy’s a good scientist, so you must be lookin’ for excuses not to go home. I’m guessin’ you like her because she smells pleasant and your parents approve. She’s a good match, society wise. But you ain’t ever gonna love her, am I right?”

Eugene ducked his head into Merriell’s neck to hide his blush, taking Merriell’s scent gland between his teeth again.

Merriell whined breathily at the pressure and continued talking. “Me though, you’ve known me less than twenty-four hours an’ you want to love me. If you ain’t a fool, followin’ your nose, then I don’ know what you are. Bet you couldn’t stand to scent her like this, bet she smells just like those perfumes that they sell to beta woman—like cupcakes, roses, and candy. Sweet, artificial. Bet the pair of you would stink to high heaven, like burnt sugar.” Eugene clamped his teeth down on the gland warningly, making Merriell yelp and squirm, the movement causing both of them to gasp at the ache that burst forth from where they were joined. Merriell pushed Eugene away from his neck, rubbing at the gland moodily. “Fuck, that hurt.”

Eugene licked his lips, contented by Merriell’s pain and the salty lemon flavor lingering in his mouth. “You let Kathleen scent you even though you don’t love her. What makes you think I can’t do the same? You know me just as well as I know you.”

“You’re an idiot. Kathy can’t scent me like this or haven’t noticed her lack of cock?”

Eugene quirked an eyebrow at that. “Well, then you’ve let other alphas do this to you. I’m sure I can do the same with any omega.”

“An’ that what your fiancée is? Just any ol’ omega?” An impish smirk spread slowly across Merriell’s face. “Shit, Gene, some prince charmin’ you are.”

“Fine, I get it,” Eugene snapped. Merriell’s words upset him, his stomach churning with guilt and anger. He felt incredibly foolish. “You don’t like me as much as I like you. Forget I ever said anything.” 

“Oh, come on Gene. Calm down,” Merriell winced, like he could sense Eugene’s resentment through his knot. “Can you grab that book on your nightstand?”

“You want to ignore each other now?”

“No, you asshole, I want you to read to me. Maybe it’ll help you get over yourself.”

After some twisting and squirming and much pained grimacing, Eugene managed to click on the bedside lamp and get his copy of Rachel Carson’s _The Sea Around Us_. He opened it to the beginning, setting the book behind Merriell’s head, arms draped over his shoulders. “Didn’t take you for a bookish type.”

Merriell pinched one of his nipples meanly. “Just fuckin’ read.”

The first chapter detailed the formation of the earth, moon, and ocean, along with the abiogenesis and evolution and diversification of life on sea and land. Carson’s words, like much of her writing, flowed poetic from Eugene’s mouth, painting a vivid picture of young earth and its tumultuous beginnings. His knot deflated sometime around the description of the Laurentian revolution, allowing him to pull free from Merriell’s warm body. But Merriell cuddled close when Eugene rolled onto his back, laying his head on Eugene’s chest, eyes earnest and pleading. Eugene kept reading. He finished the chapter, head at odds with his heart, drawing parallels between Merriell and the mother sea, each only letting people in on their terms. 

“Is that real?” Merriell asked, voice soft and awed.

“Most likely yes. It is a nonfiction but dramatized account of everything scientists knew about the ocean in 1950.” Eugene set the book back on his nightstand. He enjoyed Rachel Carson’s writing, the cadence exciting and hypnotic. Although as a scientist, he wished some of the terms she used were more precise. “There have advancements since then. For example, the earth is much older than two billion years, more likely four and a half billion. And, perhaps the most revolutionary finding, a pair of chemists conducted an experiment that imitated the atmospheric conditions of primordial earth. Under such conditions, they were successful in creating some amino acids out of ammonia, methane, hydrogen, and water. They literally made the building blocks of life out of just water and air.”

“Wow,” Merriell exhaled heavily, dragging his chin over the gland at the center of Eugene’s chest as he sat up. His gaze focused on Eugene’s face, the color of his irises mercurial in the dim light. “Guess I should go.” He sounded sad, like he didn’t want to leave. Ask me to read more, a little voice in Eugene’s head whispered wistfully. “Can I use your shower?”

Eugene nodded, rubbing his hands over his face to rein in the urge to kiss Merriell one last time. He got up when he heard the bathroom door close, pulling on a pair of pajama pants and gathering up the rumpled clothes he’d worn that day. He tossed them in the laundry hamper, certain they reeked of Merriell. He padded out to the kitchen for a glass of water, which he drained quickly, trying to rinse the luscious taste of Merriell’s slick from his mouth. Body on autopilot, he collected Merriell’s clothes from his kitchen and living room, folding them neatly and setting them outside the bathroom door. Then he sat at the kitchen table, sipping at another glass of water and wallowing in self-pity. What kind of garbage person was he, to even think of throwing away his relationship with Anne for a hormone-fueled fuck?

Absorbed in his thoughts again, Eugene startled when Merriell appeared, fully dressed, and set a hand on his shoulder. “Take care of yourself, Gene,” he said. Then he left and, mindful of the late hour, shut the door gently behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine’s Day, so get some (or don’t, where my ace peeps at?).


	2. wade up to your chest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a darker turn than I originally intended, but an a/b/o story is a perfect setting to explore consent issues and the long-term effects of sexual abuse. That being said, I would consider this chapter to be 1/3 fluff, 1/3 ‘omg my heart’, and 1/3 ‘what the actual fuck’, in exactly that order.
> 
> Here are the warnings: typical a/b/o warnings (see first chapter notes), discussion of past rape and sexual harassment, non-consensual penetrative sex (which frankly, is just a technical term for rape, although the patriarchy would fight me on this warning), and minor violence and blood...and gratuitous use of the word 'slut'.

Eugene woke up on the couch in his living room to sunlight streaming in through the gauzy white curtains. His neck hurt, stiff from being held at a steep angle by the arm of the couch. His head and stomach ached too, the latter churning queasily when he sat up, but he knew he hadn’t drunk enough to be hungover. He walked past his bedroom on his way to the bathroom, catching a whiff of pheromones. The guilt soured everything, his anxiety ratcheted so high he felt nauseous. He needed to scrub every trace of Merriell from his apartment.

After showering and grooming, Eugene made a bracingly strong cup of coffee, hand-grinding the beans into espresso-fine powder before pouring them into the percolator. The taste of coffee overwhelmed his palate, so bitter and rich he barely noticed the pheromones sticking to his dirty sheets as he stripped the bed. They bled through a little bit, when he brought them down to the apartment complex basement to wash them, the citrus at odds with the earthiness of the coffee as he fed quarters into the washing machine. He erased them with more coffee.

The coping mechanism made him incredibly wired, which was fine, fueling him to manically clean his apartment. But there came a point where there was nothing left to clean; every surface dusted and polished, all clothes either ironed and hanged or folded neatly or in the wash, bed remade, drawers and tabletops and bookbags decluttered. Eugene sweated and looked around nervously. He could re-alphabetize his bookshelves. He’d bought a few science-fiction novels last month—Isaac Asimov’s _Earth is Room Enough_ and Ivan Yefremov’s _Andromeda Nebula—_ and, while he currently had his shelves organized by book title at Anne’s behest, he thought it made more sense to alphabetize by the author’s last name.

Partway through sorting piles of books on his living room floor, the kitchen timer he’d set for his second load of laundry dinged. He shifted them from the washer to the dryer, setting the timer again for an hour. On his way back to his apartment, he paused in the hallway. Merriell stood outside his door, suitcase at his feet, chewing irately at a hangnail.

“What are you doing here?” Merriell startled at Eugene’s question and had the good sense to look ashamed.

“Kathy kicked me out and I can’t get my return ticket changed. Folks at the train station said I could try again on Wednesday. I didn’t know where else to go,” he explained, eyes glued to the floor. He smelled off, bitter and soapy like bleach. Eugene recognized it as he drew near; the chalky, chemical scent transporting him to high school classrooms and college dormitories.

“You reek. Did you douse yourself in Alpha-Calm?” The powder deodorant neutralized pheromones and was popular among adolescents and high-strung individuals.

Merriell rubbed the back of his neck, drawing attention to the mottled bruising on the skin. His left-side gland looked particularly abused, dark purple and still swollen with blood, ringed with teeth marks. “Had to. Couldn’t risk her recognizin’ your scent.”

“You took a shower,” Eugene commented in disbelief. Wearing deodorant was practically announcing to the whole block that he’d cheated.

“Well it wasn’t enough,” Merriell snapped. “Are you gonna help me out or what?”

Bristling, Eugene let Merriell into his apartment, peeved that he’d spent all morning tidying only to have him spreading his stench all over the place again. “Probably should’ve thought about this before you spread your legs.” The comment was wholly unnecessary and meaner than anything Eugene had ever said in his life. He didn’t even mean it, knowing he was just as much at fault in the situation.

But Merriell just sighed, like people threw similar remarks at him all the time. “You mind if I smoke? It’s been a hell of a mornin’.”

“Yes, but if you have to there’s a fire escape.” Eugene picked his way carefully through the stacks of books in his living room and opened the window to the fire escape. Merriell set down his suitcase next to his couch and followed, glancing quizzically at the books.

“Place was spick an’ span yesterday. What happened?”

Eugene glared at Merriell. You happened, he thought. He felt like a mess, jittery from caffeine and some unnamable dread roiling in his stomach, but he projected an outward calm. After all, he’d been raised to shove down his emotions, to hide wounds and weaknesses lest your neighbor poke their nose over your fence and see something you’d rather have hidden. “Nothing, just dusting my bookshelves.”

Merriell quirked a brow at him, probably deeming his behavior some odd habit of the gentry, and crawled out the window. Eugene shut it behind him, not wanting the smoke to drift into his apartment. He considered locking it but shook the thought aside. He shouldn’t be so angry at Merriell. He’d been just as enslaved by his passion as Eugene.

Fingers massaging idly at his temples, Eugene stared at the books on his floor and pondered the crux of the problem. Passion—too much and not enough. As a scientist, he prided himself on his restraint, his objectivity, his capacity to evaluate evidence from all sides. He never jumped to conclusions, always double-checked his protocols and data before, during, and after an experiment. He tried to treat his personal life in much the same way. His courtship and eventual proposal to Anne so meticulously planned and thought out that he was certain their marriage would work just as well. Of course, he’d had his share of mishaps, miscalculations in research and in life for which he claimed total responsibility, but he would categorize this particular mistake as the most grievous error he’d ever made. He’d let something other than his rational brain control him for a moment and, in a single night, he’d ruined everything.

His hands trembled with how badly he wanted to follow Merriell out onto the fire escape, to wipe away that disgusting deodorizing powder and cover him in his scent once more. He distracted himself by arranging his books back on the shelf, grouping them first by genre then alphabetizing by author.

Merriell came back in as Eugene was puzzling over how to categorize the handful of foreign language books in his collection. He ignored him as he entered, weighing the absurdity of putting Simone de Beauvoir’s _Le Deuxième Sexe_ next to Sigmund Freud’s _Das Ich und das Es_. He considered going out and buying another book, perhaps the original French version of René Descartes’ _Discourse on the Method_ , just to ensure that de Beauvoir would not sit next to an author that she criticized for enforcing societally-derived misogyny. Except he already had the English translation of Descartes’ _Method_ and he hated to double up on books. Perhaps he should buy _Les passiones de l’âme_ instead.

“These ain’t in English,” Merriell observed, snatching up a book on his way to the couch. He turned it over in his hand, examining the faded fabric binding. “What is it?”

Eugene glanced up to find him holding _L’âge de raison_ by Jean-Paul Sartre. “That one’s French.” Maybe alphabetization wouldn’t work for this section, but it would irritate him to arrange it any other way considering half the shelves had been restocked.

“ _Ah, vraiment? Tu parles français?”_ His accent startled Eugene, sounding nothing like his mother’s neat Parisian speech. Vowels flatter and more nasal, the ‘r’ in words alternating between a trill on his tongue or at the back of his mouth. It was natural somehow, fluid, not the halting accent of a native English speaker poorly pronouncing French.

“No, but I can understand when its spoken and I can read it,” Eugene admitted, blush burning his cheeks. The pronunciation of most languages utterly escaped him, getting muddled up in his Southern twang, and the ability to listen but not speak embarrassed him.

Merriell hummed appraisingly and opened the book, calloused fingers running over the paper like he was trying to feel the words on the page. “ _Dommage. Je peux le parle mais je ne peux pas le lire. Personnes qui parlent français dans ma famille peuvent le lire._ ”

Eugene blinked. He’d grown up surrounded by books, inundated with the written word. He forgot that others may not have. Was that why Merriell had asked him to read to him? “Can you read English?” he asked, genuinely concerned.

“Course I can read English, I ain’t that stupid.”

Eugene blushed harder at Merriell’s harsh rebuke. “Then how do you know you can’t figure out how to read French? The alphabet is the same.”

Merriell frowned. “How the hell am I supposed to do that? I know the words, ain’t got a clue how they’re spelled.”

“Same way that I learned to read German,” Eugene replied with a shrug. “Read a simple book with a dictionary next you.”

Merriell snorted, closing the book with a snap and tossing it on the couch. “You’re so fuckin’ weird, Gene.” His voice sounded almost fond. “Say, what you normally eat for Christmas Eve?”

“Why?”

“I feel bad about puttin’ you out like this. Lemme cook for you. I’m good at it. Can cook whatever you want,” Merriell leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees and hands clasped together, eyes bright. Eugene studied him, judging from his eager posture and earnest expression that he wanted to please Eugene. A bizarre sentiment, considering how aloof he’d been last night. He wondered if Kathleen had said something to change his mind, that made him want to settle. The alpha in him preened, ecstatic that Merriell was offering to do something for him.

“Whatever you like to make is fine,” Eugene said, busying himself with his books again. He didn’t want to feel happy, wanted to keep wallowing in his guilt until he worked up the nerve to call Anne.

“Ah come on,” Merriell whined. “It’s annoyin’ when people act like they don’t care. Tell me what you really want.”

Fixing him with the frostiest glare he could summon, Eugene responded shortly. “Make me your favorite food.”

Merriell’s favorite food, as it turned out, was a catfish head stew. Eugene watched, fascinated as he prepared it. He was helpless not to, having finished rearranging his bookshelf and putting away his clean laundry while Merriell was out grocery shopping. He sat at the kitchen table while Merriell cooked, half-reading the photocopies he’d made of the most recent issue of Cambridge University Press Parasitology. Merriell had quick, sure hands; finely dicing vegetables and filleting the whole catfish he’d bought as he managed a couple of pots on the stove. He’d completely upended Eugene’s once spotless kitchen, but Eugene didn’t mind, too caught up in the savory smells of his cooking.

“You got any white wine?”

Eugene underlined an in-text citation about flatworm physiology that intrigued him in the article he was reading and nodded. “Top cabinet left of the fridge.” He looked up at the sound of Merriell hefting himself up onto the counter top. “What are you doing?”

Merriell scowled at him, gesturing to the open cabinet. The bottles of wine were on the top shelf, which was admittedly well beyond his reach. Eugene doubted he could even see what was up there. “Gettin’ the wine.”

“Well don’t climb on my counters if you can’t reach something,” Eugene scolded, standing and walking over, shooing Merriell off. “Ask me and I’ll get it.” Sulkily, Merriell climbed down, grumbling about how everything in Eugene’s apartment was made for tall people. Eugene snorted in amusement, because he wasn’t that tall, 5’10” at most, and Merriell was maybe three or four inches shorter than him. “I have a Chardonnay and a…Pinot Blanc, I think. It might be a blend. I didn’t buy this stuff, I don’t drink wine.”

“Christ, gimme the Chardonnay. It better not be old as fuck.” Eugene stood on his tiptoes to grab the bottle and dusted it off before handing it to Merriell, who assessed it with a grimace. Deeming it acceptable, he walked back to the stove, whipping out a Swiss Army knife to open the wine. Rolling his eyes, Eugene returned to his journal. He struggled not to feel pleased by the farce of domesticity going on between them.

The whole scene felt too comfortable and familial, right out of an episode of American television. The alpha seated at the kitchen table, flipping through the equivalent of the Sunday paper, while the omega cooked the evening meal. Except the genders were wrong—it should be Anne in his kitchen, demure and stereotypically feminine with her perfectly coiffed hair, manicured nails, and desirable hourglass figure. Rouged lips stark against her porcelain skin as she smiled at him, requesting very sweetly for him to please get the wine instead of taking matters into her own hands and climbing on the kitchen counters like a wily cat. Eugene eyed Merriell like he was a half-feral creature; examined how his broad torso tapered down to a narrow waist, catalogued all his bold, sharp angles, noted that the complexion on his forearms and the back of his neck were a darker bronze than the rest of him. The way he moved, deliberate, almost lazy; the heat of the stove making him sweat, his natural odor oozing through the haze of the deodorizing powder. A wisp of seawater, or maybe Eugene was just imagining it, the steam rising from the tomato-based catfish stew making him hungry enough to want to take a bite.

As it turned out, Merriell was indeed a very good cook. He served the stew on long grain rice, just enough to soak up some of the sauce, and a chilled glass of the Chardonnay. The catfish flaked apart at the slightest touch, incredibly tender, and the sauce was wonderfully spicy and thick. The tomato flavor enriched with garlic, bay leaf, parsley, chili pepper, and a hint of lemon. Maybe a tad too spicy for Eugene, his lips numb and tingling from the burn, but eating a person’s favorite food gave insight into their psyche and Eugene would swallow the hottest pepper in the world if he thought it would help him understand Merriell.    

“You like it?” Merriell asked, sipping his glass of wine. He’d wolfed down his own portion at an alarming pace, going back for seconds before Eugene was even partway through his first bowl.

“I do, thank you. It’s awful nice of you to cook.”

“Oh, I ain’t that nice,” Merriell grinned and Eugene could practically see the impish streak rising up in him, some readiness to tease and be mean. He wondered if his family communicated like that, mocked each other instead of talking straight. “I’m nappin’ on the couch an’ leavin’ you to clean up the mess.”

Eugene liked cleaning, appreciated that he’d be left in peace to return his kitchen to its prior orderly state. “Seems only fair. You cooked, I’ll clean.” On a whim, he asked, “Where’d you learn to cook like this?”

Merriell chewed his lip and shrugged, eyeing Eugene’s still full glass of wine. “Picked up things here and there. You gonna drink that?”

Eugene pushed the glass over to him.

“You really don’t like wine, huh?”

“It’s too sweet.” He got up, grabbing their empty plates and taking them to the sink to start washing up. 

“It’s a Chardonnay! It’s not sweet, it’s buttery!” Merriell exclaimed incredulously. He left Eugene alone though, taking both glasses to the living room, where he turned on Eugene’s radio and sat drinking on the couch. After a moment, Eugene heard the window open and close, signaling that he’d gone out on the fire escape to smoke. Methodically, Eugene washed and dried the dishes, putting them all away in their proper cabinets. He wiped down the counters and the stove, making sure to pour a little diluted bleach over the spot where Merriell had filleted the fish. By time he finished, Merriell had come back inside, nursing his wine again and perusing the bookshelves.

“Want to try and learn to read French?” Eugene asked wryly, picking up the empty glass Merriell had left on a side table and taking it back into the kitchen.

“No, where’s that one book?”

Eugene’s heart leapt into his throat, fluttery and stupidly excited. They’d been successful at avoiding the topic of last night so far and the mere mention of the book they were reading made him think of the long minutes they’d spent tied. Hastily, he rinsed the glass free of soap and set it on the drying rack. “It’s in my room. I can get it if you want to read it. I’m almost done with it anyways.”

Merriell’s green eyes followed him, pricking at his back as he went to fetch the book. His heart pounded as he entered his bedroom, the memory of Merriell’s smell and taste and firm body lingering despite the fact that he changed his sheets this morning. He grabbed it off his bedside table, noticing that there were some tacky spots of dried slick on the cover. Great, now he’d never be able to read _The Sea Around Us_ again without thinking of sex. He handed the book to Merriell, blindly pulling a different novel from the shelf and sitting down in his lone armchair to read. He expected Merriell to return to the couch, but he didn’t, kept standing in the middle of the living room, staring at him. Finally, Eugene huffed. “Something wrong?”

Merriell dropped his gaze to the floor. He brought a hand to his mouth, nibbling at his cuticles in what Eugene recognized as a nervous tick. “Was kinda hopin’ you’d read it to me.”

Affection burst in Eugene’s chest. “Oh.”

“I mean, I can read. English, you know. It just sounded good when you read it.”

Eugene couldn’t help but smile. “You can admit that you like when I read to you.” He added, teasingly, “that you like the sound of my voice.”

A pink flush spread from Merriell’s ears to his cheeks, surprising to see combined with his stone-faced expression. He held the book out to Eugene. “Will you just read it?”

With a smug grin, Eugene accepted the book, flipping it open to the second chapter.

—

Christmas Day found Eugene in the lab, checking on his damselfly helminths. Meticulously, he selected ten damselfly nymphs from each of his incubation treatments, cutting them open to observe and photograph the helminth eggs in their abdominal segments under the microscope. The tedious dissections took several hours, requiring a steady hand and discerning eye and frequent exchanges of the scalpel blade, but Eugene hardly noticed the time passing. He lost himself easily, teasing out the tiny eggs and noting minute changes in their shape, color, and firmness. One of the species incubating in warmer water appeared to be developing faster than the other. Neither seemed to be changing very much in the cool water treatment, unsurprising considering there were no reports of these species north of the Mason-Dixie line. He sat for an hour after completing the dissections and tidying his bench, writing furiously in his notebook in a stream of consciousness fashion about possible explanations and future directions for this work. When he finished, he felt oddly bereft, dreading going back to his apartment.

He had left early in the morning, before Merriell was awake, grabbing a thermos of leftover coffee and no breakfast so he didn’t have to disturb the man sleeping on his couch. Nothing had happened between them on Christmas Eve, but Eugene could feel the storm coming. The deodorant had worn off, unmasking Merriell’s pleasant scent. It had evolved after their tryst, and while Eugene didn’t really know how his own pheromones smelled, he could tell that Merriell had taken on some of his character. Anne and others often commented that his aroma was smoky, like a bonfire, and underneath Merriell’s beachy, summertime citrus fragrance ran a note of velvety smoke, adding depth and warmth. Unbonded omegas often produced pheromones similar to highly compatible alphas to entice them, imitating what their mingled scents might be like once mated. Eugene was sure Merriell was conscious of it, a pull that strong suggesting that they’d be in each other’s arms again before he returned to Louisiana.

When Eugene got back to his apartment, he picked up the package from Anne and his mother from the mailroom and dragged his feet on the way up to his door. He didn’t want to open the package in front of Merriell and certainly didn’t want to talk to Anne afterwards. However, as he stepped into his apartment, he saw that Merriell was out on the fire escape again, back turned to the window, leaning against the iron railing. Carefully, Eugene slinked into his bedroom and shut the door. He had a spare dissection kit in his bookbag, wincing as he used the scalpel to slice through the packaging tape because he hated treating scalpels like multipurpose tools. Inside, he found several letters—one from each of his parents, from his brother and his wife, from Anne’s parents, from Anne’s sisters, and one from Anne herself. He felt fucking awful, holding the bundle of letters in his hands.

He opened and read them, finding that Anne’s sisters had sent him Christmas cards complete with black and white photos of their happy families. His brother wrote him about the stock market and global politics that Eugene couldn’t care less about, sending him some newspaper clippings and heaping praise on a new book that he’d read. He included a copy of the book, _Atlas Shrugged_ by Ayn Rand, as Eugene’s Christmas present. Anne’s parents wished him well on his studies, gifting him a year-long subscription to the parasite ecology journal that he’d been reading while he was home that summer. His own parents mentioned similar things. His father was more work focused, writing pages upon pages about some weird medical cases that he thought Eugene would be interested in—which he was, marveling at photos of a two-foot long tapeworm that had been extracted from a California man’s intestines—while his mother described in great detail her most recent birding trips and botanical surveys. Both pestered him about his time away from Anne, cautioning against such a long engagement, urging him to marry her in the spring and bring her Florida. He hesitated to open Anne’s letter.

Flopping back on his bed, Eugene rubbed the heel of his hands into his closed eyes until he saw spots. The guilt surged through his chest like some horrible, animal; a flaming wyvern, gnawing at his heart, claws scratching incessantly at his ribcage. God, he did not want to tell her. If he told her, there would forever be this barrier between them, for he was sure she would forgive and accept him anyways despite the pain he’d caused her. But the resentment would always be there, that she waited for him and he did not respond in kind, that he had wanted someone that wasn’t her, bitten their neck and tied himself to them. And if he married her, he’d always look at her and wonder what his life would be like if he hadn’t, if he’d followed his nose and found Merriell again and made him stay.

He opened the envelope, taking out the neatly folded sheets of paper inside and smoothing down the creases. They smelled faintly of her, like she’d rubbed the inside of her wrists over them after the ink had dried. Stomach churning, he brought the pages to his nose, inhaling deeply. His nose wrinkled in distaste; too sugary, too buttery, too one-dimensional for the heady lemon top notes to be anything other than sickly sweet curd made with all juice and no zest. He felt broken, because he’d enjoyed her perfume just months ago. Her letter contained little of substance, although her prose was pleasant. She understood his work was important but wished they had more time together. She missed him, she loved him, and hoped to see him soon. If he read the words aloud, he was sure they would compose a beautiful and melancholy song.

With a tired sigh, he set her letter aside and dug through the box. He pulled out the book from his brother. His father had sent him a new hand lens, since he’d broken his that autumn. His mother gave him a field guide for Florida bird identification, some shoe polish, and hair pomade. Anne made him socks—two pairs of cotton wool blend in plain black and one patterned with what he supposed were worms but actually looked like thin squiggles of pink confetti on a blue background—and a navy sweater with intricate cabling on the yoke. Nothing fun, all practical items like he’d requested. Running a hand through his hair, Eugene got up and left the room, steeling himself to call her.

Merriell was back in the apartment, wandering about in the kitchen. He seemed to be taking stock of Eugene’s cupboards. He greeted Eugene hesitantly. “Hey there, been home long?”

Eugene shook his head. “Snuck in while you were smoking. I’ll be right back, I gotta make a call.”

“Wait, what do you want for dinner?”

Eugene felt a sharp pain in his chest. “You don’t have to keep cooking for me, Merriell, I can fend for myself.”

“I don’t have to,” Merriell crossed his arms, lifting his chin defiantly. “But I want to. Let me earn my keep.”

“Fine, whatever. Make whatever you want.” Eugene fled into the hallway before Merriell could bully him for specifics.

Someone was already using the phone when he got downstairs and as he waited for them to finish, he rehearsed his conversation with Anne over and over in his head. But the message changed as he waited, as he wobbled between ruining Christmas for her or preserving their illusion of a happy couple for a few days more. Maybe he could wait until New Year’s Eve, give her the hope of a better New Year. Why am I thinking like I’m breaking up with her, Eugene asked himself, just tell her what I did and let her decide.

When Eugene finally got on the phone with Anne, his nerves crumbled, and self-preservation kicked in. She sounded overjoyed to hear from him, thanking him for the exquisite earrings and the matching watch. So, he lied. A lot. “I really enjoyed the package, especially those helminth socks.” He lowered his voice and murmured, “That was a scandalous thing you did, putting pheromones on the letter. What if your parents had smelled it?”

She giggled, her whispering a bit slurred from drinking eggnog. “Oh, that was Miriam’s idea. She suggested I send you something a little fun, so you can think of me…” She trailed off with a breathy sigh then asked, “Will you think of me?”

“Always.”

Back in the apartment, Eugene crowded Merriell against his refrigerator and growled in his face. “I fucking hate you.”

 Merriell’s mouth dropped open, eyes huge, brow furrowed with shock. Eugene didn’t let him speak, grabbed him by the throat and kissed him, eager to cleanse his palate of Anne’s too sweet fragrance. Merriell kissed him back, keening, fisting a hand in his shirt and in his hair and parting under him like the sea. The action wasn’t gentle or loving or anything at all like any of the kisses he’d shared with Anne. They kissed desperately, hopelessly, like the only solace they could find in the world was in each other’s mouths, motivated by selfishness and greed.

He is not beautiful, Eugene thought, backing off of Merriell, gasping, hand pinning him to the fridge by his skinny neck. He squeezed experimentally, thumb pushing into the inflamed, bruised scent gland under the left side of his jaw. Blood thrummed hot in his veins at the whimper Merriell made, at the pheromones bursting forth. The air felt thick with it, sparking like a volatile gas. Merriell’s muscles were taught under his hands, trembling, ready to explode.

“She dump you?” Merriell rasped, strangled as he was by Eugene’s merciless grip.

Eugene shook his head, angry at his cowardice and the light flickering prettily over Merriell’s eyes. “I didn’t tell her.”

Merriell circled his hands around Eugene’s wrist, tugging lightly. “Gonna beat me up or fuck me?”

Eugene let him go, stumbling back. His heart pounded wildly. He felt sick to his stomach. He was not a violent man—had never raised his hand to anyone—but Merriell set fire to his blood, awakening primal instincts from their long slumber. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what got into me. Did I hurt you?”

Merriell snorted, massaging his throat tenderly. “Gonna take a lot more than that to hurt me.” He took a step towards Eugene and Eugene backed up. Merriell cocked his head, questioning. “Come on, Gene, can’t just barge in an’ kiss me like that an’ not follow up.”

He continued to prowl forward, and Eugene froze, trembling; humiliated because he wanted this, was intrigued by Merriell’s feline grace. Merriell cupped his face, surprisingly gentle, and kissed him chastely, the dry press of his chapped lips at odds with his predatory demeanor. Eugene melted under the touch, the fight leaving him. He wrapped his hands around Merriell’s trim waist and pulled him closer.

“There now.” Merriell stretched up onto his tiptoes to nose along Eugene’s temple. “We can act sweet if you want.” He withdrew, jade green irises deepening to sage in Eugene’s shadow. “Show me how you’d make love to her.”

Eugene obeyed, starting to think that it was impossible for him to deny Merriell anything. He brought Merriell back to his bed, worshiped his naked body on top of the sheets. He planted open mouth kisses on every inch of him, deliberately bruising the skin around his scent glands, rubbing his own over him until the room was heavy with an incense-like fragrance. Equal parts bonfire on the beach and a heady herb burnt in offering to some ancient, long-forgotten god. He stroked Merriell’s pussy with his fingers all the while, learning his most sensitive spots, purposefully avoiding his cock because Anne didn’t have one. Eugene kept Merriell on the edge until he begged for release, begged for him.

“Gene, come on, quit teasin’ me,” Merriell panted, squirming impatiently at Eugene’s languid pace. “Come on, fuck me.” He whined some more, but Eugene muffled him with kisses, unhurried. His own cock was impossibly hard, balls aching fiercely, but he didn’t plan on sinking into Merriell this time because he wouldn’t do so for Anne. He imagined she’d be too scared, too intimidated, and that it would take several explorative interactions like this to make her comfortable with penetrative sex.

He pressed his forehead to Merriell’s temple as he gasped and clenched around Eugene’s fingers in ecstasy. Pulling them free, Eugene brought his fingers to his mouth and licked them clean, addicted to the taste. Merriell’s green eyes were hazy with lust, tracking the movement of his hands. “Why didn’t you fuck me?”

“I heard it hurts the first time, so if it were her, I’d work up to it.” He’d heard from his recently married friend, Sid, and Eugene didn’t want any fear or pain to be associated with such an intimate act.

Merriell tossed his head back and laughed, the sweat on his throat glimmering attractively in the low light. A few drops pooled in the dip of his collarbone and Eugene wanted very badly to lap them up. “You’re so fuckin’ sweet.”

“Was I misinformed? Does it not hurt?”

“No, you’re right,” Merriell huffed. “It can hurt.” The amusement drained from his face, eyes staring off to the side somewhere, lost in his thoughts. “If you’re not wet enough or if you’re not wantin’ it. Then it hurts a lot”. His eyes refocused on Eugene, who bent so close that Merriell nearly went cross-eyed. Merriell caressed the side of Eugene’s face, slow and admiring. “Figures you’d never want to hurt anyone.”

Eugene turned into Merriell’s hand and pressed a kiss into his palm. He liked how Merriell got lazy and affectionate after an orgasm, but he could see that there was something weighing on him. A sadness darkened the pale green of his irises. “Has anyone ever hurt you?”

“Oh, don’t ask me that,” Merriell groaned, covering his face with his hands. And that was an answer in and of itself, a displeased rumble starting up in Eugene’s chest.

“You’re first time hurt, didn’t it? They didn’t take the time to be gentle with you.” Eugene rolled off to the side, tugging Merriell with him, so they lay face to face. His cock still ached, and he pressed a hand to it to relieve the pressure, largely ignoring it in favor of littering Merriell’s hands with kisses. “You can tell me.”

“I can’t, I hear you growling.”

“I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at them.”

“You don’ even know what they did.”

“Then tell me.”

Merriell sighed and talked through his hands. “I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was thirteen an’ didn’t have choice. It wasn’t a big deal, just…felt bad after. I threw up a lot. Thought I was pregnant.” He chuckled nervously. “But the next time wasn’t as bad or as bloody. And every time after that it was no problem at all.” His voice started to quiver, and he cleared his throat to steady it. “Even liked it, every once and a while. An’ now I like it a lot. Hardly ever hurts anymore.”

He shivered and cleared his throat again, hands pressed tight over his eyes. Eugene embraced him, heart aching for him, shuffled closer to share his body heat. Merriell noticed his erection, reached for it with one hand, exposing his face, the hollow look in his eyes dousing any lingering desire in Eugene’s blood. He caught Merriell’s hand before he could grab him, lacing their fingers together.

“You’re still—”

Eugene shook his head, closing his eyes and leaning into Merriell’s space, sharing the air with him. “I don’t need to.”

“Come on, Gene, don’t need to spend the night with blue balls on account of my sob story,” Merriell teased.

But Eugene wasn’t going to be swayed. He knew things like this happened to women and omegas, had listened to enough indignant stories about being groped and harassed. Even saw it for himself a few times; watched men wolf-whistle at a gaggle of young women on the street, seen a lone omega shrink under some alpha’s leer. Eugene was smart, and he knew behavior like that could escalate, dehumanizing a living, breathing person into just a warm body. It sickened him, to think that Merriell had been abused like that and learned to expect and even welcome it.

“I don’t want you to have sex with me because you think I want it. Only do it when you want it,” he said, carding his free hand gently through Merriell’s hair.

Merriell hid his face in Eugene’s neck, nose tucked right up against his scent gland. He breathed deeply, his body relaxing like he felt safe. A giddy thrill ran up Eugene’s spine. “Okay.”

Eugene felt a little guilty, letting Merriell sleep in his bed that night, but he was hard pressed to pinpoint exactly why. After a dinner of fried catfish filets, they’d fetched up under the covers while Eugene read to Merriell again. As they sat there, leaning against each other and the headboard, Eugene tried and failed to imagine a bedtime routine with Anne. Furthermore, he felt bad for treating Merriell like Anne earlier, and as he fell asleep with Merriell curled against his back he found himself wanting to know more about him as a person. And this time, he didn’t dismiss the yearning as something purely chemical.

—

The train station refused to exchange Merriell’s ticket and he didn’t have enough money to buy a new one, leaving him stranded in Florida until New Year’s Day.

“I’m sorry for putting you out like this,” he apologized earnestly, turning up on Eugene’s doorstep again on Wednesday evening. “I can keep house a bit or give you some money in exchange for lettin’ me stay here.”

Eugene shrugged, secretly pleased. “You can cook, but don’t clean. I’m particular about how things are organized.”

“I noticed.”

Merriell could cook very well, mostly authentic Louisiana cuisine, but traditional French too. Simple dishes that only seemed fancy because they tasted so good. He had learned the basics of cooking through the jobs that he had growing up; first as a house boy for the family that his mother nannied, later as a prep and line cook at the restaurant where his uncle worked as a kitchen manager.

“So why are you a fisherman now?” Eugene asked around a mouthful of niçoise salad. He felt like all the butter in Merriell’s cooking would make him fat, so he’d challenged Merriell to come up with something light for dinner on Thursday.

“My sister’s husband died, and she didn’t want to sell his boat. So, between the two of us, we’re trying to keep the business afloat. At least ‘til her son is old enough to take over. Then I’ll go back to the restaurant.” Merriell picked at his own salad, clearly a little averse to greens, before giving up entirely and tearing into a bit of broiled chicken breast left over from the previous night. “I can’t stand bein’ on the water. Get seasick real easy.”

Eugene nearly snorted his sip of water out of his nose.

“Yeah, laugh it up.”

It was the little things that Eugene found endearing—the way Merriell held a cigarette, delicate and poised between two fingers, or that he never toweled his hair dry after a shower, letting the water drip from his black curls, how his green eyes followed along on the page as Eugene read, slow and careful and increasingly drowsy. He had a temper too, hissed and swore at the neighbor’s cat when it snuck through the window after him on Friday evening. Eugene watched, bemused, as he chased the grimy tabby around the living room, trying to chuck it back out onto the fire escape.

“Just let it alone,” Eugene advised when Merriell cursed, drawing his hand out from under the couch. A trio of jagged scratches ran from his wrist to his knuckles, his forearm riddled with bite marks. “Leave the window cracked and it’ll leave eventually.”

Merriell grumbled, washing his wounds in the kitchen sink. “Can’t stand cats.”

Eugene found that supremely funny, since he thought Merriell had many feline personality traits. “Do you like dogs?”

“Dogs are nice,” Merriell winced as he rubbed dish soap over his arm. “Used to feed scraps to the strays. But they’re just as filthy as cats.”

Eugene returned his attention to the graphs he’d been making. The warmest treatment of his worms had finally hatched, and he was plotting the days that it’d taken for them to incubate against the species. Hand drawing graphs took artistry, and Eugene’s perfectionist tendencies meant he’d spent the entire afternoon making the same bar graph several different ways. “Hey, um, there’s a New Year’s Eve Party tomorrow at that bar we were at last weekend. Do you want to go?”

Eugene’s stomach roiled even though he’d asked. The invitation was contrived, for he’d run into Kathleen in the lab that morning and she’d recognized Merriell’s scent on him instantly. She told him about the party because she wanted to talk to Merriell.

“So, you’re the one he fucked.” Her statement was neutral, face impassive, expression more resigned than angry. “I should have guessed. He usually doesn’t bother trying to cover up the stench of whoever he’s been with. I expect it from him. I just didn’t take you for the cheating type.”

Eugene blushed, wishing the floor would swallow him up because he felt awful enough about his fiancée and he didn’t need Kathleen to shame him too. “I’m sorry, Kathleen, it just sort—”

“Oh, save it,” she dismissed his protestations with a tired wave of her hand. “I don’t actually care. But I do need to talk to Merriell about something. Think you could get him to come a party tomorrow evening?”

Which led them to now, and Eugene chewed on the end of his pen while he waited for Merriell’s reply.

“You want to go to a party?” Merriell eyed him suspiciously and Eugene shrank a bit under his intense glare. He knew the request sounded weird coming from him, for he was clearly a homebody, more into sipping nice bourbon with a book on his lap on a weekend evening than going out to a bar.

“I just—I think it might be fun,” Eugene wheedled in what he hoped was a convincing manner. “And it’s a queer bar. I can kiss you in public.”

Now Merriell looked sheepish, scratching at his neck, fingers grazing gingerly over the swollen glands under his jaw. Eugene couldn’t help but scent him in the evenings, desperately quelling the urge to mate him. He didn’t know if Merriell wanted him just as badly, but he felt hopeful sometimes. Their combined fragrance grew stronger and more settled with each passing day, signaling Merriell’s receptiveness.

“Sure,” Merriell agreed. “Could be fun.”

Eugene doubted he’d have any fun, considering how shot his nerves were as they entered the bar on New Year’s Eve. Merriell noticed he was anxious and pressed close to his side soothingly. Eugene nearly told him off before he remembered they could act like a couple here. And then he thought about Kathleen, stomach twisting up in knots at the sight of her in a dim corner of the bar. She was standing near a few other women and hadn’t noticed them yet. Merriell hadn’t seen her either.

“Are you sure you wanna be here?” Merriell asked, shouting into his ear to be heard over the loud music.

Eugene nodded and put an arm around him. “It’s fine. Let’s get a drink.”

The bourbon settled his stomach sufficiently, making it a little easier to deal with the panic that set in when Kathleen approached them. Merriell scowled at him when he saw her, and Eugene dropped his gaze to the floor guiltily. He didn’t really know why he’d agreed to engineer this meeting between them. Maybe Kathleen needed closure or perhaps Merriell had forgotten something at her apartment. Whatever the case, he stayed silent as Kathleen dragged Merriell away to talk in private.

Eugene considered that Kathleen might be trying to win Merriell back, but that option seemed unlikely. The weary look on Kathleen’s face when she’d realized that Merriell had cheated on her with him suggested that she’d had enough. But then again, she sounded like she knew Merriell wasn’t the faithful type and maybe she was fine with that. Eugene certainly wasn’t fine with that—Merriell’s promiscuity was an abstract concept, and although it didn’t bother him that Merriell had had many partners before him, it made his blood boil to imagine that he may have others after him. The thought of Merriell with her again, or, even worse, someone else in the bar, made him sweat.

Merriell returned to his side shortly, brow furrowed and eyes narrowed angrily. He hugged Eugene tightly, as if to prove a point, and reprimanded him. “What were you thinkin, Gene?”

“I don’t know what state you left things in,” Eugene admitted. “I thought both of you might like some closure.”

“Closure?” Merriell rolled his eyes, vibrating with rage. “Let’s leave. You need to understand somethin’, Gene.”

“We just got here.”

Ignoring his protestations, Merriell hauled Eugene off his barstool and back out onto the street. They’d walked to the bar, although it was quite a few blocks away from Eugene’s apartment, and Merriell pulled him by his hand back the way they came. Once they hit the edges of the queer district, he dropped Eugene’s hand, replacing it with a smoke and keeping a respectful from him.

With a heavy, frustrated sigh, Merriell spoke. “Wanna know what Kathy really wanted to talk to me about? She wanted to remind me not be a fuckin’ homewrecker. She wanted to tell me that I had a habit, as if I didn’t already know that I have a weakness for you well-to-do, silver-spoon-sucking motherfuckers. You know, she woulda been married and knocked up by now if she didn’t run into me last summer. An’ so, she’s tryin’ to warn me off you, because I’m such a fuckin’ slut, I’m gonna drop you the instant I get back to Louisiana and open my legs for the first sorry sack of shit that’ll have me.”

“No, you won’t.” The words tumbled out of Eugene’s more out of disbelief than anything else. Merriell’s vulgarity shocked him. He knew the man was rough around the edges, but the vitriol bubbling out of him was a stark contrast to the gentleness he’d been displaying all week.

“Yes, I will,” Merriell snarled like a cornered animal. “I’m a good for nothin’ whore, Gene. Quit actin’ like you don’ know that, like you ain’t gonna move on with your life and marry your girl and start a good, wholesome American family. You’d have to be a goddamn fool to throw all that away for a pathetic fuck like me.”

Merriell’s voice was vicious, spiteful, but all Eugene could hear was his pain. He regurgitated hateful words like he believed them, a knee-jerk reaction born from years of being told that he’d never amount to anything, compounded by the carelessness with which people handled him. Eugene stared at him, hunched and walking fast in the variable glow of the streetlamps. Smoke drifted from between his lips and Eugene knew it was from the cigarette, but he could imagine there was a fire in his belly, hot and mean and fed by all the cruelty he’d suffered in his life.

Finished with his tirade, Merriell glared at Eugene, waiting on his response. Eugene just shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and focused on the sidewalk. He needed to process this, and it didn’t seem prudent to argue about the nature of their relationship on the street. Deep down he knew that letting Merriell go, letting him sink back into whatever hellish world he came from, was the smart thing to do. It would also be the easiest, just a hindbrain reflex like breathing, to wake up tomorrow and watch him walk out the door and never see him again. In and out of his life, like a blip, a comet streaking past on a quiet night. But if science had taught Eugene anything, above all else, it was that sometimes the best thing—the most rewarding, exhilarating, and groundbreaking thing—was also the hardest to do. As they walked, Eugene trailed a little behind Merriell, observing his thin, shivering frame in the dim light. He realized that the hard thing would be to convince Merriell that he was worthy of love and that he did not deserve a difficult life simply because he was born into it.

Back in his apartment, Eugene brought a bottle of good whiskey down from his liquor cabinet. “Hold on, now,” he called out to Merriell as he tried to sneak out the window onto the fire escape to chain-smoke. He injected as much authority into his voice as possible. “Have a drink with me, please.”

“I don’t wanna play house right now, Gene.”

“I’m not playing house, I’m asking you to sit and have a drink. To talk, man to man.”

Merriell faced him, brought a hand to his mouth to chew on his cuticles. His eyes were fever bright, haunting and huge in his square face. He chuckled cynically. “Man to man, huh?”

Eugene took his nice crystal tumblers out of the cabinet and poured a double shot into each. “Well what other way can I talk to you? Seeing as you refuse to be mine.” His pulse pounded, and he didn’t miss the way that Merriell’s breath hitched at the possessive word. He offered a tumbler to Merriell as he joined him in the living room. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re a slut.”

Merriell took the glass, closing his eyes and huffing a laugh. “That’s because you’re too nice, Gene. I don’t even know how many people I’ve slept with or how many times I’ve been fucked.”

“That may be, but I don’t think you should count the times it was against your will.” Merriell stiffened at Eugene’s comment, staring into his whiskey like a deer caught in headlights. Eugene took a sip of his own, needing the burn of the alcohol to brace himself. “Or the times you felt coerced, or even the times you wanted it because you felt cold or lonely.”

“What’s left then?”

Eugene smiled at the confused expression on Merriell’s face. “Just the times you felt loved.”

“You’re a goddamn fool,” Merriell sighed, rubbing a hand over his eyes. He downed his glass, a full body shudder coursing through him afterwards.

“Wow, top shelf is wasted on you, isn’t it,” Eugene remarked wryly.

“You should know better, Gene. You think you’ve never met anyone like me, but you’re wrong. I’m just like every other mutt runnin’ underfoot, a dime a dozen, made for laborin’ and little else. Fancy shit’s always gonna be wasted on me.” Merriell set his glass down on the end table, moving to stand in front of Eugene. “And love can’t make anyone a born-again virgin. If it makes you feel better to think I didn’t pop your cherry, go ahead and tell yourself such a pretty lie, but it doesn’t change what I am.”

“’Who I am’ not ‘what I am’,” Eugene corrected.

Merriell tilted his head, thrown off. “The fuck does it matter?”

“The word ‘who’ is for people while ‘what’ is for things. You’re not a thing, Merriell.” A tendon in Merriell’s jaw twitched and Eugene knew he’d struck a nerve. “Call me a fool or blame it on my privileged upbringing but you are a person to me, and it bothers me that you’ve internalized such language.”

“Such language,” Merriell mocked, snatching Eugene’s tumbler from his hand. “Get off your high horse.” He drained it, tossing it aside so carelessly that Eugene flinched, anticipating the shattering of glass on the hardwood floors. “Think I don’t deserve to be called a slut and a whore and a homewrecker? Well, I’ll show you.”

He shoved Eugene onto the couch and straddled him. Eugene let him, relinquished all semblance of control because he could feel the wild panic in Merriell’s pulse and feared he’d react badly if Eugene tried to subdue him. Merriell pulled him into a bruising kiss, clacking their teeth together and splitting Eugene’s lip. Then he pushed him flat, one broad hand splayed on his chest as he worked his pants off his narrow hips. His pale eyes were vacant, fixed on Eugene’s face but not really seeing him, and Eugene closed his own to shut out his willful detachment. Merriell rode him with indifference, used him to pursue his climax. It made Eugene a bit sick, a lump of disbelief and grief sticking in his throat, but his body reacted like it always did with Merriell—wanting so badly to tether him, keep him close. His own orgasm brought intense shame crashing over him, the knot that followed the most inconvenient, revolting part of him.

Merriell thrashed, trying vainly to pull away. “No, let me go!” Except he was too wound up, not relaxed enough, his muscles clamping down fiercely around Eugene even as he tried to work himself free.

Eugene gritted his teeth against the pain and clutched at Merriell’s hips to stop him from pulling. “Don’t you’ll—” Something in Merriell tore. Eugene could tell because he froze, holding his breath, the sudden stillness accompanied by a gush of warmth and the slight release of pressure around Eugene’s cock. He sat up, hand on Merriell’s back to steady him. He reached his other hand between them, prodding gently at their swollen flesh. His fingers came away bloody. “Oh, Merriell.”

The tenderness of his voice brought Merriell out of his stupor. He blinked, face impassive, dissociated from his body somehow. It caught up with him though, when he tried to shift off of Eugene and found himself still stuck. His body began to shake, whether with pain or rage Eugene didn’t know. “Fuck!”

“I’m sor—”

“Don’t fuckin’ apologize!” Merriell snapped. He wrapped his arms around Eugene, practically headbutting him as he buried his head in the crook of his neck. Eugene felt mildly shocked that Merriell was seeking out his scent for comfort. “Why are you tryin’ so hard to hang on to me?”

Eugene tangled his fingers in Merriell’s hair, ran his other hand soothingly over his knobby spine, leaving behind streaks of blood. He struggled to comprehend why Merriell was so angry. Merriell had been in control this whole time and he could have gotten off at any point. He must have felt Eugene’s knot growing. “If you hate me that much, why do you let me?”

The tension in the air drained out alongside the rigidity in Merriell’s body. His jagged, bitten off nails pressed lightly into the skin of Eugene’s shoulder. “I don’t hate you,” he mumbled petulantly. He was crying, hot tears dripping off his face onto Eugene’s neck.

“I’m going to bite you. Not to claim you, just to help with the pain.” Eugene pried one of Merriell’s hands off his shoulder, bringing his wrist to his mouth. It was common medical practice to lance the scent glands of the wrists, releasing natural endorphins that promoted muscle relaxation. Societally, biting the wrists was frowned upon, normally seen on poor-tempered alphas after their ruts and typically used by randy teenagers as a promise ring between sweethearts. He sank his teeth into the flesh in a perfunctory fashion. The delicate membrane of the gland ruptured easily, flooding his mouth so intensely with Merriell’s pheromones that he could feel the silk of magnolia petals on his tongue, was absolutely soaked through with sea breeze and lemon rind.

Merriell moaned, the effect immediate, turning him to jelly in Eugene’s lap. Carefully, Eugene laid back down, holding Merriell tight to his chest. “I’m so confused by you, Merriell,” he sighed, running a hand through his dark curls. “One minute you’re sweet and the next you’re fixing to self-destruct. Do you really hate yourself that much?”

“It’s…it’s not fair, Gene,” Merriell slurred, lips loosened by the rush of endorphins.

“What’s not fair?”

“You deserve better than me. Like some cosmic joke, makin’ a good boy like you match with me.” Lazily, Merriell mouthed at the gland on Eugene’s chest, his plush lips kindling a small flame of hope. “Why you gotta smell so good?”

Eugene hummed thoughtfully. Merriell’s mood had taken an abrupt turn, likely facilitated by four shots of whiskey and an unknown dosage of neuropathic hormones. He’d become so pliant and doting, Eugene wondered if he’d finally answer questions truthfully. “What do I smell like to you?”

“Nice, warm fire. The kind you cook fish over, with cedar wood planks. An’ leather bound books, the ones my mama told me I couldn’t touch. A bit like chocolate, the drinkin’ kind you get in the _mestizo_ _carré_. It’s got spices in it, chili and cinnamon.”

“Sounds sweet.”

“It’s not. You can ask for a shot of espresso in it. You’d like that ‘cuz then it’s so thick an’ bitter. No sweetness at all.”

“Ever like anyone’s scent as much as you like mine?”

“Never.”

Eugene’s heart fluttered, and he swallowed thickly. “You ever think about staying with me?”

Merriell propped himself up on wobbly forearms to look at Eugene. Tears traced the curve of his prominent cheekbones, still leaking from the corners of his red-rimmed eyes. “All the damn time.”


	3. swim out to where you can't touch the bottom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re almost out of the woods, y’all. And by that, I mean I’m mostly done whining about sexism. This chapter is particularly plot heavy and has many interactions with minor original characters. I urge you to heed the warnings.  
> Warnings include typical a/b/o sex warnings, consensual unprotected sex, and referenced violent sexual assault.

“It’s odd. He went back weeks ago, but I still smell him on you,” Kathleen commented as she sat down across from him. They were getting coffee at a little diner next to campus. Kathleen bought him a latte in exchange for some help interpreting reviewer comments on the latest manuscript she had submitted.

Eugene kept his eyes on the papers in front him. All journals required that reviewers submitted line edits written up on a typewriter, but one reviewer had snuck in some comments next to one of the figures and their scrawl was practically illegible. He treated the handwriting like some sort of code, copying down every other clear letter and trying to fill in the rest. “I’m sure it’ll take some time to fade. We were quite chemically compatible.”

“Quite,” Kathleen snickered. “That’s an understatement if I ever heard one. Y’all should have worn turtleneck sweaters on New Year’s Eve. I don’t think I’ve ever seen his glands so bruised.”

Eugene blushed at Kathleen’s salacious words. She’d become less formal with him in the past month, but now the topic of conversation bordered on scandalous. “Thought we were going to talk about the first chapter of your thesis, not my personal life.”

“We are. I just thought you’d like to know how he was doing, seeing as you too were awfully attached.” Her dark eyes glittered at him over the rim of her coffee mug.

“Really Kathleen, what are playing at?” Eugene tapped his pen irritably on tabletop. “First, you’re saying it’s for the best, now you’re trying to get me to ask after him?”

She pursed her lips and shrugged, setting her coffee down and busying herself with a stack of line edits. “I just keep in touch with him and his sisters, that’s all. He asks about you.”

Eugene focused on decoding the reviewer’s comment again, ignoring how his heart stuttered. He shouldn’t care. He still had Anne. “So?”

“It’s odd. He doesn’t normally get hung up on people and you don’t normally…let’s say, indulge in spontaneous activities. So, sue me if I’m curious, but this an odd little puzzle and I am in the unique position to solve it if only I can understand your motivation.” Kathleen tended to frown when she thought very hard about something. Eugene could see the gears turning her head as she stared at him, and he didn’t appreciate the scrutiny.

Shaking his head, Eugene admonished her. “I’m your senior colleague and this is an inappropriate conversation. I will walk out and leave you to deal with these reviews yourself.”

“Oh, please don’t! I’m promise, I won’t mention him again.”

Between the two of them, they managed to decipher the content of the comments—something incredibly nitpicky about the shapes of the data points and the gridline spacing—and returned to the laboratory. Kathleen grumbled all the while about the list of changes she would have to make to her manuscript. Eugene thought she should consider herself lucky that the paper had even been accepted in the first place.

“Of course, there were going to be major revisions,” Eugene rationalized. “You think this journal would publish an article with a woman as the first author without picking through it with a fine-toothed comb?”

Kathleen rolled her eyes at him. “I don’t need you to remind me of the misogyny in academia. I live through it every day.”

“Right, and if I could apologize on behalf of every white man ever, I would.” Eugene walked over to the water baths to check on his latest set of helminth incubations. “Are you still good with watching over my experiment for the next few days?”

“Certainly.” Kathleen joined him, peering through the still water at the tiny test tubes filled with damselfly larvae. “Your fiancée will be happy to see you. Although, I would recommend wearing some cologne or something. I imagine you’ve gotten used to it by now, but you do smell noticeably different.”

Eugene chewed his lip. He hadn’t noticed his scent changing, but he wasn’t surprised. Unlike the first time, he didn’t go on a cleaning spree after Merriell left. Traces of his pheromones lingered around the apartment, and Eugene hadn’t figured out how to get the bloodstain out of his couch. Normally it would bother him, to have another person’s scent in his territory, but Merriell smelled almost like family to him so he didn’t mind. Worse yet, deep down he still wanted Merriell to be his.

He knew he should forget about him. Merriell had made it very clear that he didn’t think they would ever work. Their lives were too dissimilar, the distance between them insurmountable in more ways than one. Aside from the actual distance between Gainesville and New Orleans, they belonged to different social classes; the power differential of Eugene’s money and education and Merriell’s lack thereof exaggerated by the stereotypes of their secondary sex. And then there was the bigotry—homosexual relationships were a long way from being accepted, as were interracial ones, although Merriell’s Haitian Créole blood was so diluted he passed for white. Eugene agreed that these barriers were impossible, partly because Merriell enforced them. He could sense the resentment in Merriell’s voice as he insisted that he couldn’t stay. Merriell didn’t want to feel indebted to him, to be looked at like some charity case by everyone who met them. But Eugene struggled to bury the feeling that they could’ve gotten past that. If only he could have convinced Merriell to try.

—

Eugene’s father picked him up from the train station. He looked a great deal tanner than when Eugene had last seen him, and Eugene remarked that retirement suited him.

“Is this retirement?” His father chuckled. “Your mother drags me around to so many events I feel busier than ever.”

Mary Frank was a vivacious, extroverted person, rather at odds with Edward Sr.’s cautious, quiet personality. Eugene often wondered how their relationship worked, for they had few common interests. He always imagined that his mother had pursued his father purely because of his esteemed reputation as a doctor. They’d married late in life, when Mary Frank was thirty—an old maid by Mobile standards—and Edward was forty-two and settled into bachelorhood. But Mary Frank must have noticed something in him when she brought her ailing mother to his practice all those years ago. Knowing what he knew now about the sheer power of pheromones, Eugene felt it would be indelicate to ask if that something had been his father’s scent.   

“Anne will be overjoyed to see you. Your mother, miraculously, has managed to keep the whole thing a surprise. And frankly, we’re glad you arranged to visit. You’ve been gone so long that poor Anne had been getting all sorts of somber thoughts, no doubt instigated by that trickster friend of hers, Miriam.”

“What kind of thoughts?” Eugene picked at a loose thread on his jacket nervously.

“Really silly things like you falling in love with someone else and breaking off the engagement. You know, dramatic Hollywood type things. As if we didn’t raise you to honor your commitments. Your mother was ruffled by that accusation. Anyway, we think your brother has stopped going to church…” Edward launched into the details of a particularly volatile feud between his mother and brother.

Eugene tuned him out, these new details about Anne making him anxious. When did she start doubting him? Could she hear his insincerity over the phone on Christmas Day? A cold sweat started down his back. He’d slipped up on New Year’s Eve. He’d forgotten to call her that morning because Merriell had done the grocery shopping. Shit, he thought, I didn’t even apologize for not calling her when we talked the following Saturday.

“Do I smell different to you?” He blurted as they pulled into the drive.

His father quirked an eyebrow, eyes roving over him skeptically. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

“A work colleague made a comment and I—forget I said anything.” Eugene darted out of the car before his father had even put it in park, spotting his mother waving from the front porch.

She swept him into her arms dramatically, looming over Eugene on the porch while he stood on the steps. “Oh, my beautiful baby boy! When you took this job, I never imagined you being away for five months. I’d almost forgotten what you looked like.”

He blushed but kept his face tucked against her shoulder. “I missed you too, Ma.”

“Mary Frank, let the boy up the steps,” his father chided, coming up behind him. “I’m sure he’s eager to head over to the Bridges’ and surprise Anne.”

His mother released him, stepping back and ushering him in the front door. “Oh, I should call and ask her to come here! I want to see her face when she sees you.”

Eugene shook his head vigorously. “Her father wouldn’t like her being out so late. I’ll just take the old car over after dinner.”

“Fine.” His mother pouted, crossing her arms childishly. “But tell us all about your plans. Are you finally going to decide on a wedding date?”

His parents interrogated him throughout dinner about his plans for the weekend with Anne and, at long last, his research. Eugene answered truthfully, although his stomach seemed determined to tie itself in knots. He had a reservation at one of the fancier restaurants in town and tickets to the local symphony for Valentine’s Day. He thought an early spring wedding would make for nice photos. He wanted the magnolias to be in bloom.

Afterwards, driving into the city proper to Anne’s house, Eugene couldn’t shake the nerves. It was frustrating, because he had already decided that he wasn’t going to tell her, and they would go on and get married as planned and form a typical, suburbanite family. He shouldn’t be nervous, shouldn’t be parked on her street having a mental break down. He gripped the steering wheel fiercely. This was not the time to ponder all those societally unacceptable questions of why he was bound to the societal norm of marriage or where the norm evolved from in the first place. Did the norm even really serve a purpose anymore in this contemporary world?

Determinedly, Eugene got out of the car, straightened his shirt collar and sweater and marched up to the door. Taking a deep, meditative breath, he reminded himself to keep his shit together and knocked. Mr. Bridges opened the door, eyes practically bugging out of his head when he saw him. Eugene put on his most charming smile.

“Evening, sir. Is Anne home?” He knew that she would be, for she had started working for a local women’s magazine several weeks ago and was spending nearly all of her evenings at home editing articles.

“Of course,” Mr. Bridges said with a grin, letting Eugene inside. “She’s going to swoon when she sees you!” He rushed up the stairs, calling for Anne. Mrs. Bridges came out of the living room at the commotion and squealed with joy when she noticed Eugene. Eugene hugged her, his heart hammering in his chest. The smile on his face felt fake and frozen in place. 

When Anne appeared at the top of the stairs, she had changed from the last time he saw her. Her long brown locks were trimmed down to a fashionable pixie cut, accentuating her slim, heart-shaped face. She dressed rather modern too, in fitting black trousers and a boxy sky-blue sweater.

“Hi, darling,” he greeted her shyly. For a brief moment, Anne looked confused, but then she reanimated, walking slowly down the stairs to wrap her arms around him. She smelled the same; lemon curd and buttery vanilla cake drying down with a whisper of clean, sun-dried laundry. Not bad, not even too sweet. But then she stiffened in his arms, drawing away and staring up at him with wide blue eyes. He smelled different and she knew.

Her parents ushered them into the parlor, wanting to hear about how Eugene was getting on in Florida. The conversation was a near repeat of the one he’d had with his own parents over dinner, but Eugene was a patient man. Anne, on the other hand, was a far cry from a patient woman. She fidgeted next to him on the couch, twisting the watch he’d given her around on her wrist and bouncing her leg. When Mrs. Bridges started asking about a date for the wedding, Anne grabbed his hand and asked if she could speak with him privately.

Anne led him up the stairs to her room, and that had changed too. She had repainted the walls from powder pink to a rather psychedelic sunset orange color. Gone were the framed fantastical oil paintings and carefully penned poems, and in their place were corkboards and magazine spreads and boldly printed posters. If Eugene didn’t know any better, he’d think he were in a college dorm room.

“Eugene, I’ve been thinking.” Icy dread settled in his stomach. Anne shut the door behind him and began to pace. She switched from fiddling with the watch to her engagement ring. “I want to go to college. I want to be a writer.”

“Okay. The University of Florida has a good liberal arts program.”

“I want to go to Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.” 

Eugene took a deep breath, feeling trepidatious and oddly hollow. “That’s awful far away. Have you told your parents about this?”

Anne shook her head. “But I wouldn’t be alone. Miriam is going, and she has an older sister there already.”

“You’ve already applied, haven’t you?” As Eugene looked around the room, at her posters and her desk, cluttered with writing samples, he could tell that she’d been checked out of Mobile for some time.

“I don’t know if I got in yet. Admissions aren’t decided until April.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I could have helped you with your application.”

Anne stopped pacing and frowned at him. “I was going to tell you on New Year’s Eve, but you never called.” She glared, indignant and regal. “Why didn’t you call?”

Eugene had prepared a million different answers in the car, but none of them made it past the lump in his throat. He stood, silent, eyes on the floor.

“Look, Eugene, I know your work is really important to you. But I don’t want to be an afterthought. I don’t want to stay at home with a brood of kids and cook and clean and wait for you to remember to give me affection.”

“It was one time, Anne,” Eugene defended himself half-heartedly. He deserved her anger and felt distinctly that any attempts to argue were truly futile. Anne was a young woman in a rapidly evolving world, and when he looked at her now, he was reminded of Kathleen, shedding feminine constructs like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.

“Isn’t that how it starts?” Anne rebuked him. “Just one time and then soon it’s all the time. Just once, you’ll stay at the lab later than you should and the next thing I know you’re staying late every night. In fact, I bet that’s what you do now. I mean, you smell so much like saltwater, I can only imagine that you spend every waking moment on your research.”

Eugene’s heart pounded, all at once guilty and giddy that his scent had taken on Merriell’s fairly innocuous aquatic undertones. “What are you saying, Anne?”

“I’m saying,” she paused, straightening her posture. He admired her dry-eyed resilience, watching her roll back her shoulders and lift her chin nobly. “I’m saying I think I’m too young for this and I don’t want to get married right now.” Resolutely, she pulled the engagement off her finger and held it out to him. “I don’t want to get married to you. And before you tell me that I’m being too hasty, I have thought about this a lot and I’m sure.”

Eugene stared at her dumbly. This was not how he expected this night would go. He’d built Anne up in his head as the archetype of a Southern belle; passive, gossipy, and groomed to be a homemaker. Content to stay at home and play second fiddle to his life. Like familiar strangers, sharing the same space but leading totally different lives. He thought that she had signed up willingly for the roles their mothers had played and their grandmothers before that, the shackles of marriage stretching back and far away into the past. But seeing her now, tall and proud, demanding to walk her own path, he realized that he had judged her unfairly. His own prejudice and social anxiety made him sick; to think that he had almost subjected the both of them to a life unfulfilled. Suddenly he saw her as a person, and he wanted her to be free.

“Okay,” he replied, taking the ring back. It was his mother’s engagement ring and the solitary gold band and cluster of diamonds felt so delicate in his hand.

Anne put her hand to her chest, shocked but excited. “Okay? You’re okay with this?”

“Well it’d be silly for us to be married if you went to Bryn Mawr and I was still in Florida. I mean, our parents don’t mind the long distance now, but four years is a long time.” Eugene bit his lip. He felt he could be honest with her now. “And frankly, I don’t deserve you, Anne. I think a Yankee might treat you better than I ever have.”

Her blue eyes glimmered with anguish. “There is someone else, isn’t there? My friends kept warning me, but I didn’t listen to them.”

“There was, but not anymore,” Eugene admitted, exhaling heavily. “It was just one week. We can tell your parents that I cheated on you if that makes things easier.”

Anne gaped at him. “One week? Do you work with her? Was she a student? Were you just going to marry me and never tell me?” She looked thoroughly scandalized. “You really don’t love anything other than your research, do you?”

Her last comment stung, and Eugene gritted his teeth. She must think of him as some sort of heartless robot. He considered correcting her, telling her how much he wanted to love Merriell, if only Merriell would let him. “They were a stranger and it doesn’t matter now. The bottom line is that you should do what you want with your life. In fact, I’ve—” He reached into his jacket pocket for the symphony tickets and placed them on her desk. “I bought some tickets for the local symphony tomorrow. You should take one of your friends.”

Anne nodded woodenly. She looked to be on the verge of crying, although Eugene thought this was the most amiable breakup he’d ever had. “Eugene, you know, I’m not doing this because I don’t love you.”

“I know,” he put his mother’s ring in his pocket. “I think it’s good that you love yourself more. You deserve better than the love I offered you.”

She laughed, wiping demurely at a tear that slipped out of the corner of her eye and ran down her cheek. “I just want to know. What kind of love did they give you that I couldn’t?”

Eugene rubbed a hand over his eyes. He wasn’t going to tell her, because then it’d be real. It was one thing to lie awake at night and imagine Merriell’s affection, like a finnicky cat or tricky tap—one minute hot and the next ice cold—another thing entirely to say it out loud. “Anne, they…they didn’t give any love at all.”

She cried for some time after that, apologizing often for leaving him. Eventually she calmed down enough for them to discuss how to break the news to their parents. They decided as soon as possible was best. Together, they walked back down to the living room and announced that they had broken off the engagement to her parents. Then Eugene went home alone and told his parents. Both sets reacted the same, shocked and upset and with much dramatic weeping.

Eugene felt detached from the situation, both saddened and relieved. As he laid in his childhood bedroom that night, he prayed that Anne would be well on her own. He imagined that she would become a very successful writer, maybe a journalist. Or maybe she’d find a good man and get married. Move north and experience snow and truly cold weather for the first time. When he tried to picture where he would be in ten years, he kept failing, the images murky and thoughts undefined. He knew he might have a faculty position somewhere in the South, for he didn’t fancy the northern states, but he couldn’t envision a home life. The memory of Merriell’s face and scent disturbed his thoughts, for he could smell him here, in the spritz of lemon oil used to polish the wooden fixtures of the room and on his own wrist.

If he concentrated, he could detect the odd sea breeze, buried underneath layers of smoke, leather, and spiced chocolate. It shouldn’t smell good, but it did, and he missed him. And he hated him. Merriell pushed people away to protect himself, Eugene didn’t doubt that, but the manner in which he did it still hurt, and Anne’s termination of their engagement was like salt in the wound. Before Merriell, the thought of being alone had never scared him, may have even enticed him with its promise of having every evening to devote to peaceful, productive meditation. But after Merriell, having tasted that intimacy—felt the warmth of another person next to him in bed and had a person to come home to, a person to read to—Eugene was unsettled by the idea of rotting away in a cold laboratory on some college campus somewhere. Tossing and turning in his bed, he considered whether that fear and that warmth were worth the effort of trying to tame a wild thing like Merriell.

At the crack of dawn, Eugene gave up on sleep. He dressed and brushed his teeth and packed up his suitcase. He wrote a letter to his parents, explaining the situation in rather vague terms. Then he got into the family’s old car and drove.

—

Thanks to the recently constructed I-10 bridge, Eugene made it into New Orleans by 9am, just as traffic started to die down within the city. He used some of the money that he would have spent on Valentine’s Day dinner for a hotel room in a bohemian-looking part of town. As he checked in, he asked the receptionist for a map of the city and whether they knew of any cafés that served drinking chocolate. They gave him directions to Saint Charles Avenue.

Eugene realized quickly that New Orleans was a busy place, constantly under construction, and arranged concentrically like a French city. While he didn’t consider himself a country bumpkin by any means, he’d never been surrounded by so many people in his life. Suddenly, he understood why Merriell thought there was nothing special about him. How could there be? What were the odds that someone was truly unique in a city filled with over 500,000 people?

The flow of traffic overwhelmed him, as did the constant press of pedestrians. He parked his car on the least crowded side street that he could find and wandered around the business district aimlessly. He stopped a few passers-by, blushing as he asked them if they knew any cafés that served drinking chocolate. An old woman walking her dog brightened at the question. “Oh, yes. There’s one on Toledano Street and South Saratoga. Hermanas something, I think it’s called.”

Following the woman’s more precise directions, Eugene found himself outside of a tall brick building. A café, Cuatro Hermanas, was listed on the door sign for the first floor. Breathing a sigh of relief, Eugene entered the building and found the place right away. Its sign was obnoxious bright blue and pink and decorated with faux sunflowers. The inside appeared just as loud and sugary sweet; the furniture an eclectic assortment of wooden chairs and tables of all shapes and sizes and neon colors. There were a few patrons already, primarily loners drinking from massive mugs and reading or writing on papers.

The barista behind the counter waved at him, snapping her gum idly. “You look lost. Can I help you?”

“Actually, I’m not lost anymore,” Eugene chuckled tiredly. “I’ve spent the whole morning trying to find this place.”

“Seriously?” She raised a pencil thin eyebrow. “Our coffee’s not that good.”

“No, I was told to try your drinking chocolate. Please tell me that you sell drinking chocolate and that you’ll put a shot of espresso in it.”

She leaned forward on the counter, assessing him. “We do, but that’s not a common order.” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Who told you to come here?”

“Do you know…” Eugene trailed off, his stomach lurching as he realized that he didn’t know Merriell’s last name. He scrubbed his hands over his face in frustration. “I don’t know his last name. And it probably wouldn’t mean anything to you to say it was Merriell, but what the hell. Merriell recommended this place.”

She smirked. “Oh, you’re in luck. I do know Merriell. He’s a bad-tempered omega, isn’t he? Pretty green eyes. Smells like lemon dish soap and the ocean but without all the disgusting fish.”

“Yes, that’s him exactly!” Eugene couldn’t contain his excitement. He hadn’t expected to find a lead on Merriell’s location in the very first place that he looked. “Do you know where I can find him?”

“Maybe.” She crossed her arms, eyes still roving over him appraisingly. Her stance made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Her voice took on a distinct gravely tone when she spoke. “What do you want with him anyways?”

An alpha then, Eugene thought, suddenly considering that he may possibly be running into all of Merriell’s exes in his search for him. The barista had an imposing presence despite being a good deal shorter than him. Her sleek physique, shiny black hair, and dark red lipstick added a distinctly foreboding flair to her countenance. She looked like the kind of alpha that started fights. “Uh, I don’t really want him for anything. I was just in town for the night and uh…I really—I just want to try the drinking chocolate. With a shot or maybe even two shots of espresso because I’ve had a rough night.”

“Okay,” she agreed, ringing up his order. “Do you want me to take out the chili or…?” She eyed him like she thought he couldn’t handle the heat.

Eugene wasn’t one for posturing, found it uncouth and unattractive, and he shook his head modestly. “No, just make it like usual.”

“Alright, one Shelton special coming right up.”

Eugene smiled politely as he paid, trying not to feel too victorious that she’d likely mentioned Merriell’s last name. Shelton. Merriell Shelton.

“You can take a seat, I’ll bring it to you.”

Choosing a tiny, round, apple red table by the window, Eugene collapsed thankfully onto the accompanying wooden chair. He took a pen and memo notepad out of his inner jacket pocket and started scribbling down what he’d learned that morning. He wondered how this woman knew Merriell and if she knew him intimately, and how many times and where. He gathered that she must know him rather well, since she lingered after setting his mug of chocolate down on the table.

“Thank you.” Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her open her mouth slightly and smell him—a shocking, highly inappropriate thing to do in public. “Can I help you?

She ran her tongue over her teeth, tracing rather deliberately over the sharp points of her canines. “You know Kathy Holbrook.”

Eugene closed his notepad and set his pen down, folding his hands slowly on top of them. “I do. How do you know her?”

“She’s my cousin. How do you know her?” The barista countered, sitting down across from him. He could hear her growling low in her chest.

“I work with her. I’m a post-doctoral researcher in Dr. Montgomery’s lab.” He offered his hand and introduced himself. “Dr. Eugene Sledge.”

She shook his hand, eyes widened at his title. “Oh, a doctor. How fancy. Figures, because Merriell gets himself into all sorts of trouble, but a doctor is a new one.”

Eugene bowed his head and sighed. “Did Kathleen tell you about me?”

“No,” she snickered, leaning back in her chair, stretching out her limbs so she appeared as large as possible. “He came in here when he first got back from Florida, looking for comfort. Prickly but sweet—you know how he gets—and I thought he smelled off. Now I haven’t seen him for days, which probably means he’s in trouble, but you show up and it all falls into place.” She shook her head and huffed.

“What do you mean he’s in trouble?” Eugene checked his watch. It was nearly noon, but he didn’t feel hungry at all, stomach suddenly roiling with fear. Against his better judgement, he took a sip of the chocolate. The silky, viscous liquid coated his mouth, warm and wonderfully bitter. The spices, fine ground cinnamon and chili pepper, hit the back of his throat and he had to hold back a cough. The barista observed his reaction with a grin, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. The expression reminded him of Merriell’s, weighed down with a bone-deep sorrow and guilt. Eugene cleared his throat determinedly. “Is someone hurting him? He talked like it was in the past but—”

“Nothing ever stays in the past,” she interjected loftily. “But what would you know about things like that, doc? Even Kathy can’t imagine what that’s like, what makes you think you can?”

“I can’t possibly imagine, but I maybe I can protect him just a little bit.” Eugene knew his posture wouldn’t help his argument, but he leaned into her space imploringly, elbows tucked into his sides to ensure he appeared small and unthreatening. He lowered his voice. “I want to help him, not fuck him. Will you tell me where I can find him?”

The barista regarded him coolly, tapping her long fingernails on the tabletop. He noted that they were lacquered the same shade of the red as the chipping paint on the table. “I’ve known Merriell for a long time. His uncle and my father are friends, so we practically grew up together. He’s like a brother to me. Why on earth should I trust you?”

Eugene frowned. “If you care about him so much then why haven’t you helped him?”

“If I was in any position to do so, I would,” she retorted, leaning forward menacingly.

He didn’t back down. “Well, you’re not and I am.”

The color drained from her face. “What would you do? Take him to Florida like Kathy was going to?”

“If that’s where he wants to be, sure. If not, I can try and find some other way to help him.”

She sat back up and rubbed a hand over her mouth, gazing out the window onto the street. Eugene could see that she loved Merriell much in the way that he did; attracted perhaps by the virility and occasional hot-headedness that he exuded, but ultimately ensnared by his quiet tolerance of life’s cruel pain and those brief, affectionate moments when he became as fragile as glass.

With a helpless shrug, she beckoned to his notepad and pencil. “He’s living with his sister, Miranda DeGuire. They’ve got a little house not far from the canal, Lower Ninth Ward.” He passed them to her, sipping at his chocolate as she wrote the address down. “I would be careful though and wait until dark to show up there. A man lookin’ like you is going to cause a stir in that neighborhood.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” she groaned, getting up from the chair. “There were so many times that I should have done something, but I was too scared too.” She fidgeted with the tie of her apron. “You gotta convince him to leave. I think that’s the only way he’ll really be safe.”

A chill raced up Eugene’s spine at her words, cold sweat breaking out on his forehead as she left him alone to tend the counter again. He flipped the page on his notepad and stared at the blank paper. What the hell am I doing, he thought. Merriell could be involved in some crime syndicate for all he knew, and here he was about to step right into it and maybe get himself killed.

He drank more chocolate. It was too rich for him, but he could tell why Merriell liked it. Much like the catfish head stew, the chocolate filled the stomach quickly, warm and heavy. A sensation of being so full you wanted to fall asleep. Eugene didn’t mind the feeling, had experienced it often in graduate school, on days when he’d forgotten to consume anything more than coffee and then binged before going to bed late at night. Nerves made him lose his appetite, and the final weeks he spent preparing for his thesis defense were a particularly nauseous haze. He set the mug aside, half-full, unable to stomach anymore.

—

Per the barista’s advice, Eugene waited until nightfall to drive over to the Lower Ninth Ward. As soon as he started driving into the neighborhood, he could see why she suggested it. The inner city fell away to run-down industrial infrastructure and squat little houses. It looked like an area that had been unwisely rezoned for the poorest residents—a degenerate, impoverished wasteland. He felt incredibly guilty as he parked behind a battered looking blue truck in front of the house, knowing that people of his status pushed people like Merriell to the fringes of society. To places like this, where the ground and water were surely tainted, so poisoned by the collapsed factories that once stood there, that even grass wouldn’t grow.

The house where Merriell lived was a sagging, off-white thing, barely large enough for two adults to live in, let alone those adults and a handful of kids. The front porch light flickered, dim and sodium orange. There were children still playing in the fenced-in yard, four of them huddled around something on the crumbling concrete front steps.

“Hey,” he called out to them from the sidewalk. They jumped guiltily, a Zippo lighter and something on fire clattering down the steps. The tallest one, a girl with wild curly hair, leapt down and stamped out the flame with her shoe. “Does Merriell Shelton live here?”

The girl’s face was obscured in shadow, backlit as she was by the porch light. She crossed her arms, reminding Eugene irritatingly of the barista. “Who’s askin’?”

Eugene clasped his hands in front of his chest, praying for patience. “Dr. Eugene Sledge. I’m Kathy’s friend and she told me to give him something.”

Pulling out the doctor card seemed to do the trick, for the girl scampered inside, shooing the rest of the children in with her. There was a commotion from the hallway as the kids started hollering, and Eugene thought he saw the curtains of a small window swish open and quickly close. His heart hammered when a man stomped through the front door, throwing the screen door open so hard that it banged against the house.

“What the fuck are you doin’ here?” Merriell snarled, striding furiously over to the fence. He stopped short a few feet away, just an inky black shadow in the yard. “I thought we decided that was it, Gene.”

“We did, but something changed. I need to talk to you.”

“You can’t be here.”

“I’m leaving, I promise,” Eugene took a scrap of notepad paper out of his pocket and held it over the fence. “I’m staying at a hotel in town, just for the night. I would appreciate it if you came by and talked to me.”

Merriell shifted from foot to foot, moving so that his profile was thrown into sharp relief, hand covering his mouth.

“Please, Merriell,” Eugene pleaded. “There’s a new variable now and I just need to know if it would change your mind.”

Merriell scoffed. “A new fuckin’ variable.” He darted forward, snatching the paper out of Eugene’s hand and turning around so fast that he barely saw his face. “Fine, now get the fuck out of here.”

Stunned, Eugene watched as Merriell practically ran back into the house, slamming the door shut as violently as he opened it.

Back at the hotel, Eugene waited for hours. He tried to read, to work on writing up the manuscript for his latest experiment, to do anything other than lay on the lumpy bed and feel miserable. He struggled with the notion that maybe this whole adventure was a mistake. Eugene prided himself on being a tenacious individual but maybe he was barking up the wrong tree. Maybe he shouldn’t be trying to win Merriell over. If things worked out, life would always be an uphill battle, filled with Merriell’s demons and societal discrimination. But then, if things didn’t, what was the harm in him having tried?

There was short, frantic knock on the door and Eugene got up to answer it. The hardest tasks yield the greatest rewards, he reminded himself as he let Merriell in. The man hunched in on himself, jacket collar flipped up and face turned to one side, resolutely avoiding Eugene’s gaze. “Alright, I’m here. Did you actually want to talk or do you just wanna fuck?”

“I’m not here for sex, Merriell.” Eugene rubbed his temples, anticipating the headache that would surely follow their conversation. “I honestly want to talk to you.”

“Then talk.” Merriell was jittery, one foot tapping obnoxiously on the floor.

“Well can we sit down? You seem…” Merriell shook his head, an aborted movement that he stopped nearly as soon as he did it, but it was too late. Eugene had already seen the yellowing bruises that covered the right side of his face. His stomach swooped like he was falling from a great height. Gently, he took Merriell’s chin in his hand and tilted his face to inspect the bruising. There were cuts, small and healed over; on his eyebrow, the bridge of his nose, and the side of his bottom lip. The bruises, as faded yellow as they were, had a straight edge to them. Three striations stretched across his jaw and cheekbone like someone had bashed his face repeatedly into a flat, cornered surface. He closed his eyes, Merriell’s words coming back to him with a new meaning to them. _Hardly ever hurts anymore_. “Will you tell me what happened?”

Merriell grabbed his arm, pulling him over to the bed and sitting him down. Eugene opened his eyes as Merriell stepped back, shrugging out of his jacket. “Wrong place an’ wrong time, like always.”

“It’s clearly so much worse than that.” Eugene’s vision blurred with tears, the sadness choking him.

Merriell sat down next to him, pulling him into a hug. They held tight to each other, inhaling their combined scent like it would be the last time. “Don’t cry over me, Gene.”

Eugene tried not to, pressing his lips desperately to that left side gland. Scabbed over scrapes sat just under it, like someone had tried to bite Merriell and he just managed to pull away. He ran a hand through Merriell’s curls, easily imagining how one might grab a fistful of them, use them as a handhold to keep him from fighting. A tear dripped down his cheek and he rubbed it purposefully into the skin of Merriell’s neck. “It was because of me, wasn’t it?”

“Gene, please, I can’t take it if you cry.” Merriell’s voice sounded tight and pained. His mouth was hot against Eugene’s neck, lips soft but insistent as he kissed along the tendons. “Just fuck me, please.”

“They smelled me—”

Merriell crushed their mouths together, hands trembling on Eugene’s face. He spoke into his lips imploringly. “Don’t remind me, Gene, please, please, please…”

Eugene kept crying but obliged, kissing Merriell tenderly, the taste overwhelmingly salty. He laid back on the bed and tugged Merriell over him, pulling his sweater over his head. They fumbled with his undershirt, laughing, crying over all the tiny buttons. Eugene pretended that he didn’t see the bruises on Merriell’s hips and thighs when he shimmied out of his pants, squeezing his eyes shut and concentrating on that citrusy ocean air. He kissed Merriell’s shoulders and décolletage, dragging his teeth over the strong, elegant collarbones but not leaving a mark. He slid his fingers through Merriell’s wet pussy, gathering up the slick and spreading it over Merriell’s cock. Eugene’s hand completely enveloped his cock, and Merriell whined when Eugene rubbed his palm over him. Merriell cradled Eugene’s head and neck, pressing his face into his chest. Eugene fingered him with his other hand, relishing in the moans reverberating through Merriell’s ribcage. He just wanted him to feel loved.

Merriell babbled as Eugene worked him over, the breathy little mewls that punctuated his sweet words making Eugene’s ears burn and hope bubble in his chest. “No one’s as good to me as you, no one. Makes me want to be yours. Just yours. Only yours. Forever yours. Never let anyone touch me again…I’d kill myself rather than let him touch me again. Fuck, Gene, please, I’m close.”

He pushed Eugene’s hands away, shuffling forward and sinking down on him with a sigh, like he was relieved, like his only moment of peace came from Eugene’s cock. The action made Eugene’s stomach flip, recalling a time when Merriell had ridden him so absently. But Merriell had never been more present than now, holding Eugene’s head in his broad hands, gazing into his eyes as he took him in as deep as he could. He kissed the tears from Eugene’s cheeks and temples, lips growing saltier and saltier.

“I’m sorry, Gene,” he whimpered into Eugene’s temple, hands carding through his auburn hair. “I’m sorry, I didn’t expect him to be there and I tried to fight—”

Eugene kissed him quiet. Merriell’s tight heat made it hard to think, but he’d known from the instant he’d seen those bruises that he’d forgive Merriell of anything. He tipped Merriell onto his back, slowly so as not to hurt him, and thrust into him at a smooth, leisurely pace. Merriell moaned and tucked his face into Eugene’s neck, taking his scent gland in his mouth and sucking. Arousal zipped up Eugene’s spine, a brand-new sensation, simultaneously electrifying and soothing. Nobody had ever touched him like this before. He responded in kind, relaxing into the moment, all doubts about Merriell erased from his mind. Objectively it was ridiculous to build a relationship from a moment of lust, but what had brought them together didn’t matter now. All he wanted was to never see Merriell hurt again.

Merriell’s teeth latched onto his gland lightly, the resulting zing unexpectedly triggering his orgasm. He couldn’t decide whether he was thankful or disappointed that he didn’t knot this time, his body so thoroughly exhausted from the sleepless night and daytime stress that it couldn’t. Merriell kept him inside regardless, digging a heel into his ass and begging. So, Eugene stayed, going soft in him as he slipped a hand between them to jerk Merriell’s cock. It was an odd feeling, Eugene decided, to be flaccid inside someone as they climaxed.

“Can I pull out now?” Eugene asked as the tremors in Merriell’s limbs died down. He looked sleepy and sated, green eyes half-lidded.

“Why didn’t you knot?” Merriell pouted, looping an arm around Eugene’s neck to drag him down for another kiss. He tasted faintly like spiced chocolate.

“I’ve had a long couple of days. I physically can’t.”

Merriell released him with a sigh. “Oh, fine.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Eugene huffed, pulling out of Merriell and laying down next to him.

Immediately, Merriell cuddled close, nuzzling under Eugene’s jaw and breathing deeply. “I missed you.” His voice was low and earnest.

“Did you?” Merriell nodded and kissed his cheek. “Could’ve fooled me with how angry you were acting.”

Merriell shrugged minutely. “I just didn’t expect you to show up, that’s all. An’ when you did I just thought…” He trailed off, but Eugene suspected that he was scared someone would find out and hurt him again.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to say.” Eugene trailed his fingertips idly over the knobs of Merriell’s spine. “I just came to tell you that Anne left me.”

Merriell perked up, propping himself on one elbow to scowl down at Eugene. “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t tell her.”

“I didn’t. I had this whole big romantic date planned for Valentine’s Day— well, today, I guess. I went over to her house last night, surprised her and everything, and then she told me that she didn’t want to get married. She wants to go to this fancy women’s college in Pennsylvania and become a writer. So, I didn’t tell her, but I lost her anyways.”

“I’m sorry, Gene.”

Eugene cupped his hand softly over Merriell’s injured cheek. It baffled him, how one moment Merriell could be this hard ball of rage and the next he was just the most precious thing. “Don’t be. We’re both free.”

Merriell leaned into his touch, eyes falling closed. “An’ you want to know if that changes my mind.”

“Yes, and if what you were saying was at all true, then I bet it will.” The words gushed from Eugene’s mouth, so hopeful he couldn’t bear it if Merriell stopped him. “You can be mine, I can be yours, always and forever. I’ll keep you safe. He’ll never touch you again, I promise. You can live with me in Florida and he’ll never find you, ever—”

“Gene…”

“If you’re worried about your sister, my stipend is more than enough to support both of us. You can work at a restaurant in town and we can send money to her, so she can hire someone to help with the fishing business. You don’t like fishing anyways.” Eugene licked his lips, searching Merriell’s face for a chink in his carefully constructed armor. “Please, Merriell. I forgive you. Don’t you think it’s time that you start to forgive yourself?”

Merriell shifted on the bed, laying down again but this time on his stomach, half on top of Eugene, one arm curving around his head. He pressed their foreheads together. “This ain’t some fairy tale shit, Gene. We ain’t gonna just ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after. Folks are gonna look at us funny and we can’t ever get married. Our kids would only have one legal parent. Can you imagine how awful it’ll be for them at school?”

Eugene’s heart stuttered. “Our kids?”

“Hypothetically speakin’,” Merriell clarified.

Eugene laughed, feeling incredibly giddy. “Our kids?” He repeated, peppering Merriell’s face with kisses, delighting in how he squirmed but didn’t try to move away. “That a ‘yes’ then?”

“That’s a ‘I’ll think about it’,” Merriell grumbled, his disgruntled tone at odds with the relaxed expression on his face. “An’ what about your parents? Bet they’re awfully upset already. They’ll have an absolute fit over this.”

“My parents are intersex too, so they might understand.” Eugene smirked as Merriell’s eyes widened with shock. “I mean, they present heterosexually—my mother’s an alpha and my father’s an omega—so it’s not scandalous but I’m sure they have a relatively progressive perspective on things.”

Merriell hummed thoughtfully, resting his chin on Eugene’s shoulder. “You know, most of my family are betas, so bein’…who I am, made me a bit of a freak. It never occurred to me that people like me could live a normal life.” He frowned suddenly, and Eugene was reminded of Kathleen’s thinking face. “Did your mama have you then or did your papa?”

“Honestly, I have never asked, and I would prefer not to know.”

Merriell snickered at Eugene’s answer, the corners of his eyes crinkling, bright and happy. Eugene brushed his dark curls away from his forehead, wanting to stay in this moment forever, close and warm and affectionate. So far in his life, he’d spent nearly every waking hour trying to understand the universe; his place in it, the purpose of life, the viability of self-will. All day, he had wondered if Merriell was worth the time, the energy, the pain it would cause to figure him out. But in this moment, none of it mattered, and Eugene was at peace with the fact that some things were beyond comprehension and could not be analyzed, only felt.

“Hey, did you bring _The Sea Around Us_?” Merriell asked, fingertips lightly drawing unidentifiable shapes over Eugene’s ribs. Eugene nodded sleepily. “Read to me? Just for a lil’ bit.”

For as long as he could keep his eyes open, Eugene recounted the science behind the rhythm and oscillation of the ocean tides. He didn’t get very far, lulled to sleep by Merriell’s steady breathing and the pervading sense that he was finally home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter concludes the story! The next chapter is just straight up porn and a tad more a/b/o world building, but if that’s not your thing then feel free to stop here.


	4. and sink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s nearly 9,000 words of porn. Some fluff, absolutely no plot, a vaguely scientific take on rut/estrus (because the a/b/o universe) and a lot of kinky sex. And, strangely enough for this trope, all of it is consensual.
> 
> The following warnings apply: typical a/b/o warnings, dominant/submissive undertones and overtones, biting and bloodplay(technically?), drugged sex, a ball gag makes an appearance, rough sex, and edging. This is pure filth.

Magnolias started blooming the day that Merriell moved in. Eugene hadn’t noticed them before, their evergreen foliage blending into the rhododendrons and tulip trees in the median of the boulevard. He was alerted by their faint, lemony floral scent; drawn in by the sight of the massive white flowers unfurling, oblong petals extending outwards until the blooms were larger than his hand. He cut a few small branches, sawing through the hard wood with a multi-tool knife, and placed them in an empty liquor bottle on his kitchen table.

Merriell laughed when he saw them. “Damn, Gene, didn’t need to get me flowers.” He’d hardly brought anything with him, just a faded army duffel and his suitcase, a slow cooker and a tin of praline cookies. “Maria insisted I bring you these,” he said, handing Eugene the tin. “I told her you don’t like sweets but she’s hard a hearin’.” 

“Maria?”

“Barista from Cuatro Hermanas. The one who ratted me out to you?”

Eugene was equal parts touched and annoyed by the gesture, unsure if she’d sent the cookies as a thank you or a dowry. Either way, it felt like she was giving him permission. He set the tin on the counter next to his coffee thermos, planning to take them into work and leave them in the biology department mailroom since he certainly wouldn’t eat them. “When do you start working?”

“Not ‘til Wednesday. An’ even then it’ll be an easy shift, just trainin’ in. Fancy places want you to do things certain ways.” Merriell had gotten hired as a line cook at a classy hotel restaurant downtown. “So, for the next two days, we can fuck ‘til I can’t walk.”

Eugene blushed at his crude suggestion. “Jesus Christ, Merriell.”

“What?” Merriell slinked over to him, grinning. He slipped his arms around Eugene’s waist and pressed close, planting a kiss on his Adam’s apple. “I haven’t had sex in almost two months, I’m dyin’. Ain’t you?”

With a weary chuckle, Eugene caught Merriell under the chin with one hand and pushed him back gently. His pupils were huge, the thin ring of his irises vivid, grass green. “You going into heat soon?”

Merriell shook his head, one hand circling Eugene’s wrist. He leaned into Eugene’s palm, swaying close, glancing up through his eyelashes. A flame of desire flickered low in Eugene’s belly, for Merriell was pulling out all the stops. “No, I’m lucky, I got a six-month cycle. But you know what you do to me.” His voice was low and sultry.

“Think I’m gonna make you wait a little more,” Eugene said, squirming out of Merriell’s arms. “I want you to get settled in. I want everything in its proper place.”

Merriell groaned with frustration. “Ugh, Gene, really?”

“Yes, really.” Eugene smiled at Merriell’s petulant expression, but he was particular about the way things were organized. He’d carved out spaces for Merriell’s things in his closet and drawers and cabinets. Merriell teased him about his peculiarity—not mean, just a tad desperate as he impatiently folded his clothes and grabbed Eugene’s hands, kissing them, trying to distract him from the chores. But Eugene had endless patience, and it amused him immensely to rile Merriell up, busying them both with tidying late into the evening.

“Come on, Gene,” Merriell whined and bumped against him like a cat, begging for attention, as Eugene washed up their dinner dishes. “I’ve been good all day. Done everythin’ you’ve asked, exactly how you wanted it.”

His neediness drove Eugene crazy; lust making him hypersensitive to Merriell’s diffusive fragrance and every point of contact between their bodies. If he hadn’t just cleaned the table, he would fuck Merriell on it. He projected an outward calm, nonchalantly drying his hands on a kitchen towel. “I guess you’ve been good.”

“Yeah?” Merriell pounced on him, standing on his tiptoes to wrap his arms around Eugene’s neck. He kissed him, open-mouthed and eager. Eugene relented, tingling all the way down to his toes as Merriell licked into his mouth like he was starving. Eugene had never felt so wanted. He stumbled back into the kitchen counter as Merriell leaned more of his weight on him, swearing as the sharp corner dug into his back.

“Hey, think we can move this to the bed?” Eugene managed to ask when Merriell moved from his mouth to his neck, breathless from the onslaught of deep kisses.

Merriell grumbled, nipping the side of his throat sharply. “Really?”

“Just this one last thing,” Eugene promised, running a hand soothingly over Merriell’s back. “I can’t imagine being tied on the kitchen floor will be any fun.”

Merriell stilled and released Eugene slowly. His eyes sparkled with mischief. “Think you’re gonna knot this time?”

Eugene licked his lips and took a deep breath. “I know I will. If you let me claim you.”

Merriell’s eyes widened and he smiled, that lazy crooked grin. “Well, gee, now I understand the flowers.” He turned and walked out of the kitchen, calling playfully over his shoulder. “Come on, then.”

As Eugene followed Merriell to the bedroom, he felt unusually nervous. The first time they’d had sex, he hadn’t been jittery, too keyed up on pheromones and guilt to worry about whether or not the encounter would be pleasurable. Now though, a greater meaning hung in the air between them, a layer of humid static close to their skin, making them sweat. To claim Merriell right now was not permanent, but a promise. It wouldn’t mate them but would certainly increase the chances that Merriell would want him there during his next heat. The thought made Eugene’s mouth water. He watched as Merriell undressed, admiring the interplay of shadow and light on his sleek muscles, the dips between the bone and the sinew. His teeth ached.

Merriell noticed him lingering in the doorframe and cocked his head curiously. “Sex works better if we’re both naked.” Eugene nodded and pulled his shirt over his head. In the brief moment where he’d taken his eyes off of him, Merriell had flopped back onto the bed, legs spread, touching himself. Eugene’s hands started to shake at the sight and he fumbled with his belt buckle. Merriell moaned, “Jesus, I’m drippin’.”

Ears burning with embarrassment and arousal, Eugene stepped closer to the bed, looking down at Merriell and unfastening his pants with increasingly clumsy hands. Merriell seemed to be putting on a show, stretching out languidly, the strong column of his neck fully bared, long and lean and glimmering with sweat. He lazily pumped two fingers in and out of himself, his other hand fisted in the sheets. He sounded so wet.

“Have you been claimed before?” Eugene couldn’t help but ask, finally kicking off his pants and underwear. They hadn’t exactly talked about this, and while Eugene wasn’t a particularly possessive alpha, he could feel a dangerous rumble starting up in his chest. Merriell had so many of his firsts, Eugene wanted at least one.

“What kind of slut do you think I am?” Merriell laughed airily, back arching enticingly off the bed. “I won’t let just anyone have that kind of power over me.” He gazed at Eugene with half-lidded eyes. “I ain’t ever let anyone claim me and I’ve never let an alpha have me in heat.”

The greed took Eugene’s breath away, sweeping like fire through his chest and up and outwards to his limbs. He knelt between Merriell’s legs, grabbing him by the hips and pushing him up the bed, intent on eating him out. Merriell was quick to sit up, fingers slipping out of his pussy to grab Eugene by the jaw.

“Hey now,” Merriell admonished. “None of your tricks. I’ve been wet all day, just hurry up and fuck me.”

Eugene growled, a little disappointed, but obeyed. He sucked Merriell’s damp fingers into his mouth, wanting to taste him, and crawled over him. Whoever came up with the stereotype that omegas were submissive was so entirely wrong, Eugene thought, observing Merriell’s smug grin as he lined up. He snapped his hips forward, sinking into him and that grin widened, like a cat that got the cream. Merriell controlled him completely, fingers curling in Eugene’s mouth, rubbing against his teeth, lemony and savory sweet on his tongue.

“Don’t go slow,” Merriell commanded, fingers sliding free and trailing wet-sticky over the skin as he cupped Eugene’s cheek. “Make me sore.”

At Merriell’s behest, Eugene submitted to his baser instincts and rutted into him at a brutal pace. He bruised Merriell’s neck with his teeth as he pounded him, spurred on by the way Merriell clutched at him and moaned, hips tilting up to meet his thrusts. He never bit hard enough to split the skin, jaw aching with restraint although he was sure Merriell wouldn’t mind, but his own body seemed to be waiting for something. Merriell twitched and gasped under him, a cue maybe, prompting Eugene to start swiping his tongue over the scent gland under his jaw. He was drowning in him; engulfed in his slick heat and the overwhelming essence of bitter lemon, magnolia petals, and ocean spray.

Hand curved around the base of his skull, Merriell pressed him impossibly closer. “Do it, Gene.”

The skin yielded easily, but the gland was more resilient than Eugene expected. He bit down hard, vision whiting out when it finally burst. His orgasm blindsided him, all electricity and iron. When it subsided, he felt clearheaded once more, whatever trance he’d fallen into lifting. He unlatched his teeth from Merriell’s neck, panting in the aftermath, amazed by the sheer amount of blood pulsing out of the bite. He clamped a hand over it unsteadily.

“Fuck, Merriell?” Merriell was limp beneath him, eyes open but unfocused, pupils dilated so wide Eugene could hardly see the green. Concerned, Eugene tried to get up, wincing when he realized they were tied. Merriell didn’t react. Eugene rolled onto his side instead, tugging Merriell with him. He patted Merriell’s cheek with his free hand, the other held tight to the bite. “Hey, talk to me, please.”

Merriell inhaled, deep and slow. “Think I’m high as fuck,” he mumbled, eyes sliding close.

“Can you stay awake please? You’re scaring me.” The blood, hot and thick on his palm, worried Eugene. Irrationally, he fretted that he’d nicked the jugular vein on accident and Merriell was bleeding out in his arms. Nobody had ever died from a claiming bite, but the blood was sending him into a panic. He shook Merriell gently. “I need you to keep talking, Merriell.”

“You’re fine, Gene. I’m fine, Gene.” Merriell swallowed, the movement of his throat as lethargic as his pulse. “I just…I’m so tired. Everythin’ feels heavy.”

Hesitantly, Eugene lifted his hand to check on the wound. The bleeding appeared to be slowing and he had the insane urge to lick it clean. He kept his hand over it, kissing Merriell’s jaw instead. “Does it hurt?” He knew it didn’t; the hormone rush a strong cocktail of dopamine and central nervous system suppressants that could relieve even the debilitating pain of childbirth.

“No, I feel good. But…” Merriell frowned and opened his eyes, blinking blearily. “It kind of burns.”

“Burns?”

“Not in bad way, just like an itch or…like when you’re jackin’ off an’ you take your hand off for a second.” Merriell wriggled a little, bearing down on Eugene’s knot, grinding on it. He sighed. “Help me out, Gene.”

“Help with what?” Eugene removed his hand from Merriell’s neck, for the bleeding had stopped, and wiped it off on the sheets. He really needed to learn how to remove bloodstains if they were going to keep fucking like this. “With the bite or do you want me to get you off?”

Merriell seemed to be reanimating, hips rocking slightly. The motion was painful for Eugene, but he gritted his teeth. “Both.”

“Both?”

“Trust your instincts, boo,” Merriell purred, leaning in close to kiss him. Eugene could taste the blood on his own lips.

Pushing aside the revulsion associated with essentially spitting into an open wound, Eugene nosed under Merriell’s jaw and gave in to the desire to lave the bite with his tongue. Oddly, the pheromones leaking freely from the punctured gland largely masked the taste of blood, iron tang adding more depth to Merriell’s complex but balanced flavor. It shocked him, how much he enjoyed the taste. As he dipped his tongue gently into the teeth marks, he took Merriell’s cock in his hand and stroked him. Before long, Merriell twisted in his grip and climaxed, hands digging into Eugene’s shoulders, muscles clenching around him like he was trying to milk him for more. When he was spent, he stretched indulgently, head thrown back, spine creaking under Eugene’s hands.

 “Gene, fuck, I feel so good,” he groaned, becoming sluggish and pliant again. “I get why people do this now.”

Eugene was starting to get it too, a pleasant numbness in his lips and fingertips. That’s why there was so much blood, he realized belatedly. Along with the pheromones, neuropathic hormones seeped from the bite wound to sedate him. They acted fast—faster than Eugene would have expected considering that he was ingesting them and not injecting them directly into his bloodstream. Still, he could feel them calming his movements, turning him as languid and sleepy as Merriell. A relic of the primal arms race between alphas and omegas—the struggle between subduing a mate to breed or knocking them out so you could get away. He wondered what it would feel like if Merriell bit him, splitting his gland to let the hormones consume him.

“Hey, Gene?” Merriell ran his hands through Eugene’s hair, fingernails scratching pleasantly over his scalp. Eugene could barely hum in response, tongue too thick in his mouth, throat muscles paralyzed. “I think I love you.”

And if Eugene was at all clear-headed or in control of his body, he would have commented that it was the hormones talking. Instead, he basked in their doped-up facsimile of love.

—

Living together required a brief period of adjustment, especially since their schedules turned out to be completely opposite. Eugene was a morning lark; he woke up with the crack of dawn, experienced the height of his productivity before noon, and preferred quiet evenings where he could turn in shortly after sunset. Merriell was a night owl, his routine primarily dictated by the restaurant hours; he woke up around noon and was off to the restaurant by 2pm, typically returning after the kitchen closed around 11pm. Sometimes he ended up staying later on Friday and Saturday shifts, until midnight or, rarely, two in the morning. He didn’t work on Sunday or Monday. Eugene, being essentially his own boss, rearranged his schedule so that he worked from home on Mondays. However, he often felt like all they did together was share a bed for a couple hours at a time.

And, of course, as with any roommate, Merriell had some annoying habits. He knew Eugene was particular about the tidiness of his apartment, and frankly Eugene couldn’t get too mad at him because he obviously tried to follow the rules, but sometimes he forgot to clean up after himself late at night. He tended to leave his keys on the kitchen table and half-full glasses of water on the counter or living room end tables. He dropped his clothes on the floor before going to bed. He washed his dishes, but he didn’t dry them fully before putting them away. For the most part, Eugene wasn’t bothered by any of it, since he’d had worse roommates during his undergraduate studies, but then the hot season started, and the humid heat made every little thing unbearable.

Eugene’s bad mood wasn’t Merriell’s fault at all. He snapped at everyone; Kathleen, the undergrads, even Dr. Montgomery exactly once—the onset of rut simmered his brain and Merriell was a viable omega in his territory, _his omega_ , and Eugene _wanted_ him. His joints and his teeth ached, and the whiffs he caught of Merriell’s scent made him hyperaware of everything Merriell did. If he closed his eyes and followed his nose through his apartment, he could trace Merriell’s path exactly, knew what he’d touched and if he’d left a single crumb on the floor. The hypersensitivity began on a Thursday and Eugene burned with it, angrily restraining himself from jumping Merriell in the mornings.

The morning seemed to be the only time, aside from Sunday and Monday, that their paths crossed, and Eugene prided himself on his self-control. Merriell looked absolutely precious as he slept. He always laid on his stomach, one side of his face mushed into the pillow, one hand stretched into Eugene’s space. His ever-present scowl disappeared in his sleep, and Eugene could tell when he was dreaming by the twitching of his eyelids. What he wouldn’t give to drag him up onto his knees and fuck him from behind. But he wouldn’t, wouldn’t ever because he would never touch Merriell when he couldn’t consent. So, instead, he dug his canine teeth into the palm of his hand and went about getting ready for the day.

Kathleen noticed the bites on his hands. The Montgomery lab had started collecting water samples from the watershed again, and Kathleen and Roger, the undergrad, were out on a lake with him that Friday. Roger had the good sense to keep his mouth shut, but Kathleen remarked on a fresh tooth mark under his thumb.

“Are you sure you should be working in your condition?” she asked, eyeing the streaks of blood he’d left on the oar of their canoe paddle. Some of the scabs had cracked, the wounds bleeding slightly.

He glared at her, growling, “I’m perfectly fine.”

She shut up, casting a worried glance at Roger. Eugene didn’t miss how Roger kept close to her after that, always placing himself between the two senior scientists like he thought Eugene would attack her. The act was wholly unnecessary. If he could keep his cool around Merriell, then Kathleen was hardly a temptation.

Saturday presented an entirely new set of problems, the compulsion to maul someone like lava in Eugene’s chest. He’d woken up the second Merriell sank into bed around midnight, as the weekdays transitioned into the weekend, the warmth and weight of him on the bed breaking through his usual deep sleep. He felt Merriell kiss his shoulder, lips barely brushing the skin, tender but absentminded, like a habit, like he came home every night and pressed his mouth carefully to Eugene’s shoulder as he slept. Eugene wanted him so much, but he waited until Merriell’s breathing slowed, deep and even as he slipped into unconsciousness, to get up and pace in the living room.

He’d never had it this bad and he didn’t know what to do. Past ruts had just been a prickle of heat under the skin, a niggling need in the center of his brain, a particularly desperate week of fucking into his own hand night after night. Now he had Merriell and he knew that he’d help him out if he just asked, but the timing was so inconvenient and Merriell had to work tomorrow and Eugene was losing his mind over it. His body kept warring with his brain, insisting that there was a perfectly willing omega in the bedroom if he would just _get over himself_. Except he didn’t know for sure if that was true—most alphas spent their ruts alone for a reason, even his mother kept clear of his father when it was her time—and just because Merriell had welcomed his advances in the past didn’t mean he’d appreciate them now.

Resolutely, Eugene tried to calm himself with some chamomile tea and a short story by Wolfgang Borchert, _Draußen vor der Tür_. German was a complicated language and Eugene chose it in an attempt to make himself concentrate, but he couldn’t get the letters stay on the page. He’d blink and see Merriell, the silvery scar of a claiming bite on the left side of his neck shimmering faintly in the moonlight, the page gone completely blank in the wake of the memory of his gland parting under his teeth and the taste of his blood…

Eugene’s whole body hurt, not just his joints and teeth now but his muscles, twitching under his skin with this errant energy that he could not rein in. He barely made it to sunrise before he changed into some athletic wear and left to go for a jog. He couldn’t stand to be in the apartment anymore, not with Merriell’s scent drifting from the bedroom. He ran until his lungs hurt, which wasn’t very long because he had asthma, and wandered far from his apartment in the ridiculous mid-May heat. He walked with his face tipped up to the sky, watching it change from salmon pink to a rather nice shade of lavender and finally robin egg blue. A church bell rang in the distance and he counted ten tolls, meaning Merriell would be up and getting ready for work soon. He didn’t recognize the neighborhood he was in, but that didn’t mean much because his vision had become so blurred he doubted he’d recognize anything at this point.

The rational part of his brain, which was rapidly losing this battle of will, reasoned that he shouldn’t go home, or he’d run into Merriell and all hell would break loose, but his body had other ideas. He was standing in his kitchen before he properly weighed the pros and cons, leering at the object of his obsession.

“Hey, where you been?” Merriell sat at the kitchen table, flipping through the morning paper and drinking coffee, glancing over his shoulder innocently. He did a doubletake. “You okay? You look like shit.”

Unlike omegas in heat, an alpha in rut didn’t smell any different from normal. Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, just another member of the flock going about their business as usual until they finally snapped. And Eugene was _really_ close to snapping. “Fine. Went for a run.”

“You run?”

Eugene shut himself in the bathroom. He stepped into the shower, fully clothed, and turned the tap on cold. The icy spray shocked him, shook the horrid fantasy of bending Merriell over the table and tearing into him out of his head. His own cravings sickened him, his erection refusing to wilt despite the cold water. He masturbated furiously, trying to think about nice things, gentle things, anything but sex and violence actually. Merriell’s pretty green eyes, the soft brush of lips on his shoulder, quick, sure hands dicing tomatoes in the kitchen, the rasp of a page turning when they read together on Sunday night. Not his delicious pussy and cock, not the unmarred scent gland on the right side of his neck, not the firm weight of his hand on Eugene’s chest when he rode him, not even the gasps he made when he came. Brain on the absolute fritz, Eugene climaxed, muffling his groan into his mutilated palm as he painted the shower wall white.

He felt a little better afterwards, not clean but cool, the fever in him reduced from a boil to a simmer. Stripping off his wet clothes, he wrapped a towel around his waist and ducked into the bedroom to get dressed, certain that Merriell was out on the fire escape for his morning smoke.

“Gene?” He heard the scrape of a kitchen chair as Merriell got up. He grabbed a pair of pants blindly from the wardrobe, pulling them on as fast as he could. His fingers were malfunctioning now and try as he might, he could not get the pants to zip up or button. Merriell appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame, assessing him skeptically. “Somethin’ wrong?”

Eugene shook his head, still trying to fasten his pants. “No, why?”

“Well, for one thing those are my pants. Pretty sure they ain’t gonna fit you.”

“Really?” Eugene glanced down. The length of the pantleg was entirely too short for him. How on earth had he not noticed? “Fuck, you’re right.”

Merriell’s eyes narrowed. “And another thing, is that you weren’t here when I woke up.”

Eugene couldn’t explain that away. He laid in on Saturdays now specifically for Merriell, had done so since he moved in. “Yeah I…” He rummaged around in the drawer for a pair of his pants, turning around so Merriell wouldn’t see his cock as he changed. The omega’s mere presence was arousing to him. Merriell pushed off the doorframe, starting towards him, and he panicked. “Stop!”

Merriell froze, probably scared by the authoritative snarl that underlaid his voice. Eugene rarely pitched his voice low like that, thought that rumbling was immature and rude. “What the fuck is goin’ on, Gene?”

“Don’t freak out,” Eugene said, more for himself than Merriell. “I’m in rut. I got it handled, I just can’t have you too close right now.”

“Jesus Christ,” Merriell scoffed, rolling his eyes. “When were you gonna tell me? I can help!”

 _I can help_. A purr started up in his chest at Merriell’s offer, but he shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “You’ve got work tonight.”

“So?” Merriell’s voice was incredulous. “I let you fuck my mouth, you go to sleep, I go to work. Easy as pie.”

The mere mental image of Merriell on his knees, pouty chapped lips stretched red and shiny around Eugene’s cock made his knees shake. “Merriell, don’t say shit like that. We’re one bite away from being mated. I can feel it in my bones, if I get my hands on you, I’m not letting you leave.” 

Silence settled between them, spoiled by Eugene’s pulse pounding in his ears. Furthermore, he was still so keenly aware of Merriell’s existence; every minute disturbance in the pattern of his breathing, the creaking of the floorboards as he shifted his weight uncertainly from foot to foot. He heard his lips part to speak. “So, what? I just let you suffer?”

Eugene chuckled weakly. “I’m not suffering, Merriell. I’m just…practicing self-control.”

“You look like you’re suffering,” Merriell retorted. “I don’t like this. Imagine how you would feel if I told you to just leave me alone during my heat.”

“It’s not at all the same, Merriell. You think it’s all about sex, but I’m much more dangerous than you think—”

“Bullshit. I don’t believe you’d ever hurt me.”

“Have you even dealt with an alpha in rut before?” Eugene barked, eyelids flying open as he glared at Merriell. “I could lose control and kill you!” His whole body trembled with scarcely contained rage. “I’m not infallible, Merriell. It’s very easy for me to imagine you doing the slightest thing—like just trying to leave the goddamn bed for a glass of water—and setting me off so bad I tear your throat out. Shit like that happens all the time, or don’t you read the news?”

The way Merriell looked at him, pitying, not at all as scared as he should be, made Eugene nauseous with fear. “Okay then,” Merriell assented, bowing his head submissively. “I’m gonna go into work early. Maybe I’ll be able to come early.”

“For the love of God, please don’t. Just work overtime,” Eugene pleaded, hiding his face in his hands. Just a few more days and he’d be free from these primitive urges. “Work every day, see if you can stay with Kathy if you can.”

“You know Gene, my heat is next week. It’s a shame we’re not synced up.”

“Don’t fucking tell me that,” Eugene groaned. Just what he needed, to think about Merriell mewling and dripping slick on the bed, begging for a knot.

“Just sayin’. Take care and drink some water. You look miserable.” The door clicked shut as Merriell left the bedroom and Eugene sagged against the wall with relief.

Merriell’s absence didn’t exactly feel better, in fact his chest reverberated distinctly with growls of displeasure, but it soothed him to know that he was out of danger. It also enraged him to think that he’d let a perfectly good, receptive mate waltz out the door. He flopped onto the bed and wriggled out of Merriell’s pants, resolved to content himself with his right hand.

At some point Eugene must have fallen asleep, for he woke up to the creaking hinges of the bedroom door. A faint sound, normally imperceptible, but rut made him overly alert to noises and smells. He caught Merriell’s scent at once, citrus sea spray muddled with lingering restaurant odors; aromatic herbs, predominantly garlic, splashes of white wine and briny seafood, a slight oily residue from the fryer. He rumbled warningly, “Merriell, don’t even think about it.”

With a sigh, Merriell clicked on the bedside lamp. “Before you try and kick me out, I’ve got a solution.”

Eugene peeked over his shoulder at Merriell. In one hand he held a red rubber ball attached to two short leather straps. In the other, he held a key. “What the fuck is that?”

“This is a ball gag, so you can’t bite me,” Merriell explained with a smirk. “You know, there’s a whole section of the sex shop devoted to managin’ alphas in rut. I thought about getting’ chains too, to tie you the bed, but you’re so particular about your sense of control that I figured you wouldn’t like it. Plus, I kinda want you to throw me around a bit.”

Eugene rolled onto his back and ground the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, sure that he was hallucinating. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s easy. Look, you fit it in your mouth and the straps go ‘round your head to hold it in place. Merriell demonstrated nonchalantly, the sight of his wide-open mouth sending Eugene’s blood surging in his veins. The ball glimmered with saliva when he spit it out. “And there’s a lil’ padlock you use to cinch it, so you can’t take it off. The guy at the shop said it was completely alpha-proof. You won’t be able to rip through it.”

“Okay,” Eugene agreed, body shaking, suddenly beyond caring. He just wanted to sink into Merriell’s willing body and never leave.

“Okay.” Merriell knelt on the bed, hands up placatingly. “I’m gonna put it on you now.”

Eugene was barely aware of how much he was growling, too focused on staying still while Merriell pushed the rubber ball between his teeth and pulled the straps tight around the back of his neck. The leather felt soft against his cheeks, the cold clink of the chains at his nape sending a pleasant tingle down his spine. He compressed the rubber ball between his teeth experimentally. It felt sturdy enough, the minor yield of the rubber sating some deep instinct. The _snick_ of the tiny padlock closing had him rumbling even louder, anticipating the sweet release of the unbearably hot pressure that had been building up in his body for days.

“Boy, you sure are makin’ a lot of noise,” Merriell chuckled nervously, leaning back to set the key on the nightstand. Eugene could tell Merriell was getting scared now, because he hardly ever growled, but they were quickly reached the limits of Eugene’s self-restraint and the gag prevented him from speaking. “Now, if I want to stop, is it okay if I bite you? An’ I’m talkin’ anywhere, any gland I can reach.”

Eugene nodded, hands already sliding up Merriell’s thighs. Breaking a gland would be Merriell’s only hope of escape if things got too intense, and that kind of boneless relaxation sounded blissful in the wake of the frenetic energy roaring through him.

Merriell cradled Eugene’s face in his hands, kissed his nose and forehead. “You’re good, Gene, you’re always so good to me.”

His words dissolved any remaining reservations that Eugene possessed, the thin, frayed threads of his self-discipline tearing apart as easily as Merriell’s clothes. “Shit, Gene, I liked that shirt.” Eugene liked the way Merriell’s breathe hitched as he flipped him over. The punched out little gasps that quivered on the exhale when Eugene forced him into a lordosis position, one hand on his neck pinning his face to the mattress, the other pulling his hips up. He admired the curve of his spine, the spasming of his ribcage, clenching down on the ball gag to relieve the ache in his teeth. He slipped two fingers into Merriell’s hole, purring at his sharp inhale, noting that he was wet—not nearly as wet as the other times they’d had sex, Eugene thought—but wet enough. Replacing his fingers with his cock, Eugene plunged in with a groan.

“Oh, fuck,” Merriell whined, pained, but Eugene couldn’t find it in himself to care. Merriell was tight and warm, but not too much so, his slick almost cooling on his cock, pussy yielding like butter to Eugene’s thrusts. Eugene lost himself to it and Merriell was absolutely _perfect_ ; perfect position: head bowed forward onto the mattress, forearms braced just right to absorb force of Eugene’s rutting, perfect noise: not overly vocal but letting out an occasional whimper or moan, perfect scent: the perspiration beading up on his skin fragrant like lemon rind and magnolia flowers, cutting through the smoky, salty musk of sex.

The silvery scar tissue of the bite mark on the left side of Merriell’s neck gleamed in the low light, and out of everything that’s what set Eugene off. He ground deep into Merriell, the familiar pressure of a knot building low in his groin. As he came, teeth digging so hard into the rubber ball that his jaw cramped, he scraped his thumbnail against the mark. Merriell panted under him, muscles twitching frantically around the swelling knot, but he kept still and remarkably relaxed. Eugene liked that too, how well he seemed to bear it, and pressed forward just to jostle him, to hear him gasp. There came a point, soon, where Merriell struggled to accommodate, and Eugene could hear him wincing, muscles fluttering wildly as the knot continued to grow.

“Ah, how much bigger is it gonna get?” Merriell asked through gritted teeth. Truthfully, Eugene didn’t know, had never had the pleasure of sharing his rut with an omega. He suspected that times he’d knotted Merriell before were ‘training’ knots; a way to get a compatible omega used to the sensation, to entice them into a bond, and ever since he’d claimed Merriell he hadn’t had any. With the ball gag in his mouth he couldn’t relay any of his reasoning, but in this fragile moment of clarity brought on by the sheer relief of a proper tie, Eugene tried his best to soothe Merriell. He maneuvered them onto their sides and curled around him, rubbing a hand over his quivering flank. “This hurts a hell of a lot, Gene. I shoulda listened to you.”

Eugene nuzzled the back of Merriell’s neck, the rubber ball bumping along the knobs of his spine. He felt sorry that there was nothing more he could do. “Ah, fuck, I regret puttin’ that gag on you now,” Merriell whimpered, reaching a hand back to tangle his fingers in Eugene’s hair. “I wish you could bite me, put me out of my goddamn misery.” Eugene reached a hand between Merriell’s legs, hoping to take some of the edge off by stroking his cock. He was completely soft, and Eugene cupped him gently to warm him up. Merriell sighed and squirmed, head tipping back into the crook of Eugene’s neck. “Don’ know if that’ll help much but we can try. God, in one week I bet a knot like this wouldn’ hurt at all. I swear, Gene, I’ll feel so cavernous, so fuckin’ empty, this would feel just right.” His cock started to thicken, hot and throbbing slightly against Eugene’s palm. “Can you imagine? If we ever got synced up, Christ, I’d get pregnant for sure. Between forgettin’ my pills an’ takin’ your knot every hour or so—oh!”

Merriell yelped as Eugene’s hips twitched forward unconsciously. Eugene tried to apologize for it, wrapped his hand firmly around Merriell’s cock and swirled his thumb over the glans. But Merriell recognized that his words had gotten him excited, hand ruffling through his hair affectionately. “You’re good, Gene. I know you can’t help it. I don’t think you know how much it means that you’re even tryin’. Most alphas just take what they want without so much as a ‘thank you, please’.” Merriell’s breath stuttered, grip on Eugene’s hair tightening as Eugene brought him closer and closer to the edge. He could tell, because he was starting to praise him in a sweet, absentminded way. “Selfish assholes, all of ‘em, ‘cept you. You’re always givin’—even when you’re takin’ like this, you’re takin’ care of me. You’re so good to me. Makes me want to keep you forever.”

Spurred on by Merriell’s words, Eugene stroked faster, tighter, until Merriell keened and came with a shudder. He panted, muscles tensing around Eugene. “Oh, that hurts worse. Fuck, the instant your knot goes down I’m takin’ that fuckin’ gag off. You can rip my throat out, I don’ give a shit, so long as you pop a gland and eat me out.”

Eugene wanted to agree to that, the impulse to bite overwhelming—like holding your breath for as long as possible underwater, the reflex to breathe a convulsion in your chest, fighting to make you inhale even though doing so would fill your lungs with water. He shook his head urgently. If Merriell took this gag off, he’d drown.

“It’ll be fine, trust me,” Merriell murmured, petting his hair. Then he grabbed Eugene’s arm and brought his wrist up to his mouth. “I’ll keep you doped up if it makes you feel better.” He kissed Eugene’s wrist, lips plush and dry, then he bit down.   

The world liquified on an exhale, the fever in Eugene’s blood extinguished by the icy cool rush of hormones in his veins. There was a taste, just for a second, in the back of his throat; wood smoke, worn leather, that too rich drinking chocolate from Cuatros Hermanas, and the barest hint of ocean. Everything tingled, then went blissfully numb, and Eugene floated.

“Damn, I shoulda done that sooner,” Merriell grumbled and Eugene could hear but not quite feel him disengaging, a sloppy slick sound as his knot quickly deflated and Merriell pulled off his cock. Merriell sat up with a groan, leaning over Eugene to fetch the key, and Eugene could smell _him_ , smell himself on him and in him. Horse chestnut blossoms and smoke, bitter brine and blood. The tiny lock clicked and Merriell eased the ball out of his mouth, strong hands gentle on his face. “Okay, Gene?”

“More than,” he replied, fire sparking under his skin again now that the gag was off. His body, though, felt too heavy to move. “This is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had.”

“Yeah well…” Merriell snuggled close to Eugene, idly kissing his collarbone, his chest, the faint smattering of freckles on his shoulders. “Bein’ smart’s your job. ‘Sides, I want to do this for you. Idea bein’ that you’ll pay me back in kind next week.”

“You’re not going be able to walk right for weeks.”

“No, sugar, I probably ain’t.”

—

Barely four days passed between the end of Eugene’s rut and the start of Merriell’s heat. Four beautiful, normal days of work and missing each other in bed. Four days with no crazed sex, which they both needed, because the subsequent dip in testosterone left Eugene lethargic all day and Merriell’s pussy became especially tender towards the end. Then Sunday morning rolled around, and Merriell radiated virility, his scent so potent that Eugene had to open all the windows in the apartment just to breathe and think properly. He didn’t hate it; it was just incredibly distracting, and he was still so tired. Merriell remained eerily calm about the whole thing, presenting Eugene with a box of condoms and a massive dildo during breakfast.

“What the hell, Merriell?” He blushed, a bit self-conscious since the dildo was significantly larger than his own cock.

“I’m pretty lucid durin’, but there’ll be times when I’ll be unbearable an’ I can tell you ain’t recovered. So, if you ever get sick of me whinin’, shove that in me an’ I’ll shut up real quick,” Merriell explained, expression somber. “And please use condoms, even if I beg you not to.”

“Of course.” Eugene didn’t want a baby right now either. “Say, Merriell…” Merriell quirked an eyebrow at him, mouth hidden behind his coffee mug. “Do you usually spend your heat with someone?”

Merriell chewed a fingernail, clearly considering whether Eugene would be jealous if he answered. To be frank, Eugene was already jealous, would always be disgruntled by the life that Merriell had led before he met him. The rut cemented the idea that Merriell was _his_ ; equal parts gut instinct and the knowledge that Merriell stayed with him despite the pain. His eyes darted over the fading bruises and bites on Merriell’s wrists, neck, and shoulders. He was sure that Merriell loved him, even though he’d never said it straight.

“I’m not like you,” Merriell said finally. “Don’t got the will to stand it alone. But you’re the first alpha, I swear.” His gaze met Eugene’s; irises pale, yellow-green in the morning sun—the sweet green of new things growing. “First and only.”

“First and only,” Eugene repeated, the words like a balm over that itching part of his brain that sometimes wondered how he measured up to other lovers. It hadn’t bothered him until he’d fucked Merriell from behind, noticing, as the haze of rut started fading, how he trembled with fear. Merriell wasn’t comfortable, Eugene realized, when he couldn’t see the face of the alpha behind him. “Is there anything else that I should or shouldn’t do?”

Merriell shrugged, face flushing uncharacteristically pink. “You’re always sweet, Gene. Just be you.”

Eugene smiled sympathetically. He imagined that it would be some time before Merriell opened up to him about the ‘whys’ of his hang ups, but he could be patient. Merriell was worth all the time in the world. “Want to read for a bit? I got this new book, _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ , and it sounds really interesting. Probably not as captivating and lyrical as Carson or Leopold but…”

“That sounds just fine.”

They spent the afternoon lazily wrapped up in each other’s arms on the couch; Eugene seated between Merriell’s legs, leaning back against his chest, letting him tuck his nose under his jaw as he read aloud. The author, Thomas Kuhn’s, was a bit dry and Merriell dozed, head lolling forward onto Eugene’s shoulder. Eugene continued to read, because he found Kuhn’s thesis fascinating. Kuhn’s proposed that scientific progress primarily advanced through paradigm shifts, largely driven by technological improvements and the subsequent explanation of what were formerly designated as anomalies, rather than purely by the rote and linear accumulation of facts. A simple deduction, in retrospect, and important in the context of scientific history.

Merriell twitched against his back, cadence of his breathing changing slightly. Eugene held his hand, kissed it absentmindedly, and flipped to the next page. Then Merriell whimpered; a thin, wounded cry that brought a chill to the nape of Eugene’s neck. He butted his head gently against Merriell’s, calling his name softly to wake him. “Merriell?”

His eyes flickered open slowly, unfocused, brow furrowing. He wrapped his arms tight around Eugene’s chest and squeezed. “It’s startin’ to hurt,” he mumbled into Eugene’s shoulder.

“Hurt like how?” Eugene asked, nuzzling Merriell’s ear. He’d gotten so used to being soaked in Merriell’s scent that he couldn’t tell if his heat was in full swing. And he was curious, for the clinical descriptions of human estrus mentioned pain, likely due to the inflammation of the uterus and the muscle cramps that accompanied the dilation of the cervix and vaginal canal, but he wasn’t familiar with that kind of hurting.

Merriell groaned, knuckles gone white from how tightly his fingers were laced together. “Hot. Stabby. Like something’s bein’ scooped out.”

“Want me to do something? I mean, your glands aren’t really healed over, but I could—”

“Let me blow you?” Merriell turned his face towards him, face red, eyes hooded and dark, mouth open and gasping.

Eugene chuckled, confused. “I don’t see how that’ll help with the pain.”

“I just need to know.” Merriell released him, pushed at him to make him stand up and turn around. “Need to know you’re good for it, that you can do it.”

“Merriell, you know I can get an erection. We’ve had sex before. In fact, that’s all that we did last week, or did you forget?”

“Didn’t forget.” Merriell dropped to his knees on the floor. His broad hands grasped Eugene by the hips and sat him back down on the couch, nudged Eugene’s thighs apart, pressing gently but insistent so he could settle between them. “Just let me, I need it. Need to taste you.” He leaned forward and kissed Eugene, mouth fever warm.

“Okay,” Eugene agreed skeptically, setting the book on the end table to start unfastening his pants.

Merriell shook his head, reaching over and bringing the book back. “You can keep readin’.”

“Really Merriell? I doubt I’ll be able to concentrate with my cock in your mouth.”

Merriell kept shaking his head, eyes glassy and glinting emerald in the diffusive light of the living room. “Try,” he coaxed, voice hardly above a whisper. “Wanna see how long you’ll last.”

A shiver ran up Eugene’s spine and he nodded, obediently opening the book. This sort of power play between them was becoming their new normal. First the ball gag, now this. Maybe Merriell would actually bring in chains next. He felt an unexpected rush of excitement by the thought, aided by Merriell’s calloused hand on his cock, pulling it free from his underwear. Normally, Eugene wanted to be in control of everything all the time but handing the reins over to Merriell brought a peaceful blankness to his whirring brain. It was easier than he anticipated, to continue reading as Merriell stroked him to full hardness. Kuhn’s prose was straightforward, formulaic, and concise in its delivery of the stutter-step philosophy of scientific discovery. Then Merriell took him in his mouth and concentrating became immeasurably more difficult.

Eugene had sucked Merriell’s cock plenty of times, reveling in the salty, bitter lemon taste of him, but had never demanded the favor returned. Some primal part of him believed it was a waste to have Merriell swallow his cum. He disagreed whole-heartedly now, head falling back, regretting that he’d ever spent a moment thinking it was a waste to have Merriell’s mouth hot and slick around him and his tongue…” Oh, Jesus.”

Merriell pulled off with the most obscene popping noise Eugene had ever heard. “Keep readin’, Gene.”

Nodding, Eugene returned his attention to the book, placing a finger on the page to mark his place. Something about the Copernican Revolution as the best example for Kuhn’s paradigm-shift argument. He shuddered as Merriell swallowed him down again, taking him deep; sloppy and careless, the barest scrape of teeth on the underside of Eugene’s cock. Then Merriell pulled back, tongue smoothing along the veins, all slippery heat and suction. Eugene read the same sentence over and over again. The adherence to a geocentric orbit of the planets resulted in the labeling of perfectly normal phenomena as anomalous observations. Merriell bobbed along his length leisurely, noisily, and Eugene burned with lust but he didn’t take his eyes off the page.

Was this an anomalous observation, he wondered? Weren’t omegas supposed to be gentle and submissive; the heat reducing them to a trembling mass of hormones susceptible to all sorts of bad decisions? Was cock-sucking not a servile activity; a form of worship and an insult? How was it that Merriell could be out of control and yet command every fiber of Eugene’s being?

The longer Merriell sucked his cock, the more Eugene adjusted to the sensation, relaxing. He snuck a few glances down at his lap, pulse thundering in his ears at the sight. It was better than he imagined; the stretch and slide of Merriell’s chapped, red lips over his cock. Furthermore, Merriell seemed to really enjoy it; eyes closed serenely, one hand tucked between his own legs, rubbing idly. Eugene wanted so badly to buck up into his mouth, to disrupt that serenity, to make him choke and whine desperately. His hips twitched ever so slightly and Merriell’s eyes flicked open, staring at him with a heavy-lidded glower.

“I know, I know,” Eugene huffed, hand flexing on the page with discomfort, crinkling the paper. “I’m reading.” He wasn’t reading.

But his words mollified Merriell, who gripped the base of Eugene’s cock tightly with one hand and continued shifting the head in and out of his throat. The pressure in Eugene’s loins built ever higher, and he bit his lip. Merriell’s grip seemed to be staving off his orgasm. Let Merriell have this, he chided himself. All last week they’d done what the alpha wanted—and none of that was gentle or sweet—now it was the omega’s turn. If he wanted to lazily suck Eugene’s cock all night, then Eugene should let him. Except he needed to come, the mounting pressure bordering on painful. Not a definable, real pain, but a frantic, throbbing _need_.

He snapped the book shut and begged. “Merriell, Merriell, please.”

Merriell pulled off his cock again, frowning at him reproachfully. “I like how you taste.” He punctuated the statement by lapping up a bead of precum from the tip.

“Okay, I get that. I understand that. But what if…” Eugene rambled, trying to come up with a reason that would convince Merriell to let him come. He leaned forward and ran his hands through Merriell’s hair affectionately. “What about my seed? Don’t you want to know how it tastes? Don’t you want it in you?”

Merriell brightened at the suggestion, the impulse to breed making him purr with delight. He removed his hand from Eugene’s cock and sank his mouth down on him again, the combination of the vibrations in his throat and the release of pressure absolutely heavenly. Eugene tangled his fingers in his hair, but didn’t direct him, just held on for dear life. The overload of stimulus brought on his climax quickly. Heat flared in his chest as Merriell drank every drop, then kept suckling on his softening cock. Eugene tolerated it for a little while, oversensitive and trembling, before pushing him off with a firm hand to the juncture of his neck and jaw. Merriell whined at the loss.

“I like how you taste,” he murmured, voice hoarse. He rubbed his cheek against Eugene’s hand, nipped at his fingers peevishly.

Eugene was exhausted already. He didn’t know if he’d survive this, even though his stomach swooped with arousal at Merriell’s coquettish display. “I know, but I need to recover.” He rested his forehead against Merriell’s sweaty temple. “I love you, darling, but you gotta wait.”

The sentiment slipped out before he really thought about it, and Merriell tensed. Eugene waited. He was unsure if he should try and take it back or just let it hang there in the air between them. He’d said it on accident but that didn’t make it any less real. I do love him, he thought, nosing the soft, damp curls just above Merriell’s ear.

“Do you mean that?” Merriell asked, small and hesitant, like he could scarcely believe what he’d heard.

“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.”

Maybe it was wrong to say it when Merriell wasn’t quite himself, but when Merriell leaned back his green eyes were clear again, pupils almost back to normal size. “Don’t tease me, Gene. I’d believe anythin’ right now if I thought you’d fuck me after.”

“I love you,” Eugene reassured him, “I mean it. And I’ll fuck you tomorrow, I promise.”

Merriell’s eyes widened, red lips parting slightly in utter shock, like no one but Eugene had ever said that they loved him. Then Merriell tackled him with a hug, jumping up from the floor and onto his lap. He held on so tight, he crushed the air from Eugene’s lungs. “Don’t need to promise me anythin’, so long as you love me I know you mean every word.”

Eugene buried his face in the crook of Merriell’s neck, squeezing back with equal force. Some corner of his mind marveled at how they’d ended up like this. Just six months ago, they were strangers, keeping warm on a cold winter night. Now it was almost summer, the air in the apartment stifling and muggy, rife with the smell of citrus and sea salt.

He loved him—and it wasn’t a realization that thundered over him like an ocean wave, but a mere glance upwards, as though he’d just noticed that he’d been living underwater all along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you coming along on this journey. I’m thankful for the support and comments, but more than anything I enjoy writing about their strange and tender love. I’m not quite done with these boys and hope to have a sequel up soon-ish, considering there’s so many heavy topics that I alluded to but didn’t explore in this installment. Anyways, I hope you liked the porn.


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